Apple announce iFund for iPhone application startups

Coinciding with the launch of the iPhone's Software Development Kit, Apple has announced the creation of a $100 million fund to be distributed to startups developing applications for the iPhone.

The fund will be known as iFund, and will be led by Matt Murphy of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley.

The move echoes the $10 million fund created by CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, which was distributed to startups creating applications for Facebook.com.

According to the Kleiner Perkins website, "KPCB's iFund is a $100 million investment initiative that will fund market-changing ideas and products that extend the revolutionary new iPhone and iPod touch platform. The iFund is agnostic to size and stage of investment and will invest in companies building applications, services and components."

Also announced over the weekend was news that Sun Microsystems are currently making use of the iPhone SDK to create a Java variant for the handset, which they say should be finished by Q2 2008.