The owners of Apple’s ultimate gadget, the iPhone, and those who bought an iPod Touch, will be able to communicate with their friends through Google’s IM client, GTalk.

In a note posted on GTalk’s official blog, Leo Dirac, Product Manager of GTalk, announced that an iPhone version of Google’s client is now available for download.

The new version of Google Talk is designed specifically for the iPhone and runs in the Safari browser, so the iPhone owners who wish to use the IM client don't need to download or install anything. They will have just to type www.google.com/talk in Safari’s address bar and  start chatting.

As Dirac noted, GTalk for iPhone is browser-based, which means that it will work on the 3G iPhone as well. In fact, this is not the not the first service optimized by Google for the iPhone.  

In January this year Google revealed a new integrated applications suite for the iPhone. The suite was unveiled after in December Google launched its first customized Web portal for iPhone users.

The improvements Google brought to its new applications suite included a streamlined interface and the fact that users can customize the applications on tabs in the Google.com menu bar. The tab customization includes Google’s popular services such as Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Reader and Picasa.

Google’s strategy to create iPhone versions of its services has proved to be successful so far. A study released in March by the research company M:Metrics has shown that YouTube and Google Maps are among the iPhone’s most popular destinations (over 30 percent of the users for YouTube and 36 percent for Google Maps).

GTalk, the IM client launched by Google in August 2005 and late last year Google announced it can be used to chat with the AIM users as well.