Editor’s Note: The following article is reprinted from Macworld UK. Visit Macworld U.K.’s blog page for the latest Mac news from across the Atlantic.
Apple is likely to introduce better support for corporate e-mail solutions such as Lotus Notes and Exchange next week, an analyst said Thursday.
American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu made the prediction in his latest note to clients Thursday.
“Even before the iPhone was launched, our concern was its mediocre corporate email support even though it had strong consumer email capability (Yahoo Mail, Gmail, .Mac, AOL mail). Our concern stemmed partially from Exchange’s lukewarm support of Macs (understandably so as Microsoft needs to defend its Windows franchise),” the analyst notes.
The analyst cites his own industry and developer sources, who suggest that after “months of beta testing” this weakness will be addressed with improvements in iPhone’s ability to work with Exchange server and IBM’s Lotus Notes.
“What isn’t as clear to us is how Apple will accomplish this, whether this is from internal development (most likely), third-parties including MSFT (next likely) with its ActiveSync technology, or RIM Blackberry Connect (possible but less likely), or a combination of two or more.”
The analyst also predicts Apple will also deliver improved security, better support of Virtual Private Networks, and enterprise applications such as Customer Relationship Management systems.
“We still have high conviction that Apple 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,” Wu wrote.
Apple is holding an event next Thursday in which it plans to outline support for third-party programs and big business.