Although actual applications were nowhere to be seen, a few demos were shown.

A large part of the event was geared towards enterprise users, push email and native exchange support (courtesy of a license agreement for activesync)

VPN support and a remote wiping feature should also boost the iPhone's credentials in the business world.

However, for the rest of us there was also news of the SDK...

Apple plan for this to be released in June and so there isn't a possibility of 3rd party applications until then.

On the plus side, the SDK does seem to be fully featured, allowing 3rd party developers the same access to the iPhone as Apple themselves, it's also a free download.

All applications will be exclusively available via a new App Store application on the iPhone itself, this will enable over the air purchases and updates.

What this does mean though is that you need to join what Apple is calling the iPhone Developer Program if you want to distribute your applications, this carries a $99 a year cost. This is a requirement even for freeware applications.

Games development seems to be the first to get going on the new SDK, EA and Sega both had demos, of Spore and Super Monkey Ball respectively.

AOL also got in on the act with a demo of AIM, which apparently they got up and running on the SDK in five days, which does make you wonder why Apple couldn't have got iChat out of the door by now.

developer.apple.com