Looks like we’ll be able to develop for the iPhone or iTouch using C#. The development environment isn’t Visual Studio though.

The benefits to SharePoint aren’t immediately obvious as you can still access SharePoint using the standard web-based approach, but a custom App could be developed that provides a better UI on the mobile pages that SharePoint provides, using SharePoint’s web services.

Here’s some more info:

"Novell has announced MonoTouch 1.0, a commercial SDK that allows developers to build iPhone apps using Microsoft’s .Net Framework instead of the Apple-designated C or Objective-C languages. The SDK leverages Novell’s Mono runtime for running Windows apps on non-Windows systems, allowing developers to utilize code and libraries written for .Net and programming languages like C#. With MonoTouch, the Mono runtime provides such developer services as garbage collection, thread management, type safety, and Web services, said Mono leader Miguel de Icaza." – Taken from slashdot.org

I’ve actually been trying to play about with this. There are a few things to note:

• You need a Mac for development. Pain in the ass this one but I’m going to see if there’s a windows version of Leopard that can run on VMWare. Mac’s are pretty alien to me but I’m intrigued enough to venture into new territory.
• Monotouch isn’t free. Costs are $399 1 Personal,  $999 1 Corporate,  $3,999 5 Corporate. However a trial edition does exist that permits you to develop against a simulator.
• You need the Apple iPhone SDK. To publish on the Apple store it’s $99

More info here – http://monotouch.net/. I’ll be sure to keep you posted on how it goes.