Yesterday’s iPhone Software Roadmap was split into two major announcement. The first half of the event focused enterprise users, whereas the other half was totally about SDK. iPhone now supports Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, which means iPhone is now a enterprise ready device.
Enterprise users can setup iPhone to work with Microsoft Exchange and enjoy Push Email, Push Calendar, Push Contacts. Version 2.0 of iPhone software will also provide enterprise features like VPN Connectivity, Certificates and Identities, Enterprise WiFi, Enforced Security Policies, Device Configuration, and Remote Data Wipes.
If you are a developer and you want to build a application for iPhone, you’ll need these things:
- Mac OS X Leopard
- An Intel-based Mac (PC and PowerPC folks are out of luck)
- Xcode
- A free Apple iPhone Developer account and the SDK (getting your application approved and pushed out to the devices will cost you $99).
Well, that’s not all. If you are planning to charge for your app, Apple is going to keep 30% of your revenues. All hosting and credit card processing will be done by then, and they’ll pay you on a month-by-month basis. They’ve set aside $100 million iFund to help developers (remember $100 million which Google set aside for Android app developers?). Applications which are free to users, won’t cost anything to the developers (except that $99 buck onetime fee).
Apple’s Enterprise Ready version 2.0 software isn’t quite ready. If you are an enterprise user, and would like to help Apple, then join iPhone Enterprise Beta Program. iPhone’s version 2.0 firmware will be rolled out to users at some point in June (my guess is June 30th).
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