Despite being traditional rivals, Microsoft has announced that it is interested and seriously looking into creating applications for the iPhone. Rivals Apple and Microsoft have slugged out many a battle and both hold on to their operating systems as the best thing that happened to mankind since the invention of the wheel.

So though it makes sound business sense for Microsoft to quit harping about the advantages of its own Mobile operating system (Windows Mobile) and go in for the moolah by developing whats becoming the most widely admired cell phone globally ; it still comes in as a surprise.

In an interview with Fortune, Microsoft exec Tom Gibbons revealed that company engineers are already tinkering with the iPhone. Fortune writer Jon Fortt speculated that Microsoft may have made up to $200 million from sales of Mac software last year. Since the company’s largest Mac offering, the Microsoft Office Suite, has plenty of logical mobile uses, the company could stand to make plenty more by expanding the productivity suite onto the iPhone.

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