Apple bolstered the iPhone's enterprise credentials during today's iPhone Software Roadmap event at its Cupertino headquarters. Saying that business users were demanding additional capabilities from the iPhone, Apple will bring push capabilities for e-mail, contacts, address lists, and other features via a software update due in June, said Apple worldwide marketing head Phil Schiller. The iPhone will also be opened up to third-party developers with a new SDK, effective today. "[The iPhone] is the most advanced platform out there for mobile devices," boasted CEO Steve Jobs. "We are years ahead of any other platform for mobile devices."

The iPhone will offer full Exchange support, thanks to licenses from Microsoft. The iPhone will also get enterprise-friendly security features, including remote wipe, support for Cisco IPsec VPN, certificates, identities, and WPA2/802.11x support. "Enterprise customers will be pretty excited," says Schiller.

The long-awaited iPhone SDK is also here. Jobs said that all third-party developers will have access to the same APIs and tools Apple uses to build iPhone apps. Developers will use Cocoa Touch, a new SDK for the iPhone. Cocoa Touch supports multitouch events and controls, the accelerometer, view hierarchy, localization, alerts, web view, people picker, image picker, and camera. All of these features will also be available for the iPod touch.

A third-party SDK also means games, and EA announced that it will be bringing Spore to the iPhone. According to EA, all 18 levels are up and running and the iPhone version will include a full editor. Other demos included a Salesforce.com app, a drug identification app from Epocrates, and the venerable AOL Instant Messenger. Rizwan Sattar of AOL bragged about how easy it was to use the SDK. "I've never written on a Mac before, never written in Objective-C, just had a spec sheet for how to connect to AIM!"

Applications for the iPhone will be available through the AppStore, which will come included with the next iPhone software update. The AppStore will be browsable by categories such as games, business, finance, lifestyle, and health, and will also have a Top 50 section. If you buy an app and it is later updated, it can automatically be updated on the iPhone. Apps will also be available for purchase from a Mac or Windows PC. Developers will be able to set their own prices (including "free") and will keep 70 percent of the revenues according to Jobs.

Check out more from our live event blogging as well as coverage on Infinite Loop.