A lot of the developers who would be working on small apps for the iPhone/iPad would probably qualify as small businesses for Microsoft's BizSpark program, which gives them free access to lots of tools including Visual Studio. You qualify as long as your business is real, less than 3 years old, and earning less than $1mm in revenue. Once you exceed that, you should be able to afford the licenses.
A lot of the developers who would be working on small apps for the iPhone/iPad would probably qualify as small businesses for Microsoft's BizSpark program, which gives them free access to lots of tools including Visual Studio. You qualify as long as your business is real, less than 3 years old, and earning less than $1mm in revenue. Once you exceed that, you should be able to afford the licenses.