Business on The Huffington Post
CUPERTINO, Calif. — Apple Inc. wants the iPhone to become a business e-mail gadget _ and a portable video game machine that might also help users manage their health records.
Cupertino-based Apple unveiled new software Thursday that reflects its intensifying effort to court business customers and placate third-party developers who want to build iPhone applications but have been locked out. A beta version of the software went out Thursday; the full version will be available in June.
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To help fuel development, venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has created a $100 million "iFund" to support new companies developing the next generation of applications.
Kleiner Perkins partner John Doerr, who's managing the fund, said he's particularly interested in funding applications in health care.
"That should be enough to start about a dozen Amazons or even four Googles," said Doerr, who helped fund both companies in their infancy. "And if we're running out of money we'll run around and look for more."
Apple has forecast that it will sell 10 million iPhones by the end of the year, giving the device roughly 1 percent of the worldwide cell phone market. In January Apple CEO Steve Jobs said the company has sold 4 million iPhones since they went on sale June 29.
The iPhone has claimed 28 percent of the U.S. smart phone market since its release here in June, according to Jobs. But many businesses have shied away because they want the device to work better with their corporate e-mail systems.
To woo more business customers, Apple said Thursday it's tweaking the iPhone to support Microsoft Corp.'s Exchange software, which addresses a key weakness in the gadget and puts it in more direct competition with Research in Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry and Palm Inc.' Treo smart phones.
Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, said the software update will give iPhones the security and integration of e-mail, calendars and contact lists that businesses have been demanding.
"This is a great, great way to solve all those requests," Schiller said.
One thing noticeably absent from the presentation, however, was support for IBM Corp.'s Lotus Notes e-mail package, another program widely used by businesses. IBM announced in January that it was partnering with Apple to make the software work on iPhones, but there was no mention of the partnership Thursday.
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