Apple's iPhone to the Enterprise

The new iPhone 3Goffers 3G networking, built-in GPS, and iPhone 2.0 software that supportsMicrosoft Exchange ActiveSyncand can run third-party applications built with the iPhone SDK.

During his keynote presentation in San Francisco at the Apple worldwide conference, Steve Jobs said, "The iPhone is the third part of Apple. The iPhone 2.0 platform is a giant step forward. It includes a software developer kit." Steve Jobs said a quarter of a million developers had downloaded the SDK in the first 90 days since Apple started its developer programme.

Jobs said the iPhone 2.0 platform offers businesses enterprise support. "We have built in out-of-the-box support for push email, contacts, calendar, and auto discovery of Microsoft Exchange servers. We have worked with Cisco to built in its secure VPN into iPhone 2.0."

The iPhone 2.0 platform also offers a remote wipe function, Jobs said, which can be used to clear data from the iPhone if it is lost or stolen.

Jobs said the phone has already been tested by large businesses through Apple's iPhone beta programme.

"35% of the Fortune 500 companies has participated in the iPhone beta programme." The list includes four of the five big banks, five commercial banks the top five securities firms, six of the top airlines, eight of 10 top pharmaceutical companies, Jobs said.

The iPhone 3G is due to ship in 22 countries on July 11. There will be two models: an 8GB model priced at $199 (US) and a 16GB model priced at $299 (US).