Shaw Wu with American Technology Research took note on Thursday of Apple’s upcoming event on March 6th which will provide a roadmap and SDK for iPhone native software development. His conclusion is that the new business emphasis of the iPhone will address a key weakness. Also, Apple is well positioned to address the economic slow down.

In an investment note obtained by iPO, Mr. Wu said:

• Even before the iPhone was launched (see 06/18/07 note), our concern was its mediocre corporate e-mail support even though it had strong consumer e-mail capability (Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, .Mac, AOL mail). Our concern stemmed partially from MSFT Exchange’s lukewarm support of Macs (understandably so as MSFT needs to defend its Windows franchise).
• Our industry and developer sources indicate that after months of beta testing, this key weakness will likely be addressed with improvements in its ability to work with Exchange server and IBM’s Lotus Notes, the top two platforms.
• If true (which we believe is), this will prove key in having more enterprises and SMB adopt iPhone as their mobile platform.
• What isn’t as clear to us is how AAPL will accomplish this, whether this is from internal development (most likely), third-parties including MSFT (next likely) with its ActiveSync technology, or RIMM Blackberry Connect (possible but less likely), or a combination of two or more.
• We do not think it will be easy to replicate the robustness of Blackberry push e-mail, but nonetheless, we view improvements as positive.
• Other enhancements we are picking up including improved security, better support of VPNs, and enterprise applications such as CRM.
• Contrary to investor fears, we still have high conviction that AAPL will ship 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008. To a degree, what gives us confidence is the large number of hacked phones signaling strong intrinsic demand.

"While near-term trends look difficult with a looming recession and a slow-down in consumer spending, we continue to believe AAPL is well-positioned to weather the storm better than most with its strong fundamentals," Mr. Wu concluded. He reiterated a Buy rating and a target price of US$175.00.

Yesterday, Apple COO Tim Cook restated Apple’s expectation to sell 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008, and that news sent AAPL soaring on Thursday morning.

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