softKeyboard - force to open in numeric view

Does anyone know if it's possible to set the input view for a softKeyboard (i'm publishing to iOS for iPad but assume it will be the same for touch screen devices in general)

Basically i have built an app which has a series of input text fields - all of them are limited to numeric input, however the default view on a soft keyboard is the alphabet characters, and each time data is entered the user has to press the numeric view toggle first.

Is there a way to bypass this and force the keyboard to its numeric state programatically?

I've looked through the SDK references but couldn't seem to find anything....

Thanks

Sean