By The Pollack Group
By Diana Brown
Salesforce recently announced that it was partnering with Apple to create a mobile strategy in advance of their Dreamforce conference. The partnership has a few key goals, most of which involve integrating some of the most utilized features of Apple’s products into the Salesforce app. The bigger picture outcome of this partnership is the creation of a seamless user experience between Salesforce and Apple, so that the businesses’ operations function seamlessly within each other.
A few weeks ago, another big partnership was announced within the tech industry, that of Snapchat and Amazon. That partnership comes in the form of a new visual search tool, which allows Snapchat users to point their camera at a given object or barcode, and then be served with search results on Amazon, relating to said object. Users can then purchase the item on Amazon directly from Snapchat.
Both of these partnerships point to a bigger trend in the tech industry — social media apps partnering with other influential businesses that have some claim in the tech space. Ultimately, partnerships like these, will benefit consumers in that they provide seamless interaction between multiple platforms. Additionally, companies themselves benefit from similar partnerships as mergers tend to attract publicity and public trust. This reigns particularly true when the brands both have their own strong following.
This all begs the question of what the future of brand partnerships will look like; who will team up next? Apple has had a history of partnering with brands that are not directly correlated to their business plan. IBM, Cisco and GE are just a few of the partnerships that Apple has announced over the years, illustrating their desire to integrate themselves into the business plan of a variety of companies.
What Apple seems to seek out in the companies they partner with, is a similar ethos. Despite having its partners not being directly correlated to the product which Apple makes, many of the brands have a similar mission, which is to be constantly innovating and ultimately change the way the world and technology interact.
Though having more companies operate under one umbrella can make accessing their services more convenient, it does spark discussion of whether or not these type of actions are fair. The fairness element is particularly poignant regarding smaller tech companies attempting to get their start in a densely populated market.
The word monopoly isn’t a far-off description for the activities taking place here. Although the companies joining together are not technically players in the same industry, in this global marketplace most businesses need to have some stake in the tech market. As of right now, there is no end in sight to the growth of companies like Apple and Amazon. But this does beg the question if the growth needs to be monitored or even hindered in future years.
For now, however, we’ll enjoy accessing our beloved Apple features on multiple platforms and shopping via Snapchat. For now…
For more agency insights, visit our WellRed archives
