Can iPhone crack the business market? New apps may give Apple a way

Already loaded with more than 25,000 applications, the shelves at the iPhone app store are about to get a lot heavier. A nifty software-development tool that makes it much easier to build applications for the popular Apple (AAPL) smartphone is expected to lead to a lot more personal finance programs, Jedi lightsabers and medical charting apps.

Perhaps even more important for Apple, the new flood apps could skew towards useful programs for businesses, an area where Apple has long struggled to gain significant traction against the dominant business software player Microsoft (MSFT). The new tool is called MonoTouch and it comes, ironically, from Linux company Novell (NOVL). "It definitely lowers the barrier to writing and porting iPhone applications because there are many more C# developers than Objective-C developers," said Daniel Leuck, CEO of smartphone and social media software development company Ikayzo.