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Next week, it will announce a Lotus Notes email service for the Apple mobile platform at its Lotusphere conference in Florida as a free upgrade for anyone with a Lotus Web-access licence; new users will have to pay $39 per year.

IBM is also planning iPhone-compatible versions of the complete Lotus Notes package, which provides much the same collection of tools as Entourage or Outlook in Microsoft Office, and its Lotus Symphony office software suite. It has previously announced that it is working on a Mac version of Symphony for release in the first half of this year.

There are 135 million Lotus users worldwide, almost exclusively in corporate environments. The absence of "enterprise class" email has been a criticism of the iPhone, though by that most are referring to Microsoft's Exchanges system, the main rival to Lotus Notes.

IBM spokesman Mike Azzi says that the company has a lot in common with Apple, even if that only amounts to a common "enemy" in Microsoft. "We're going to cross-pollenate," he says.