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American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu has once again named Apple stock as potential hot property, citing the well-rumored upcoming Exchange and other corporate email support for the iPhone as boosting demand for the company. 

"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)" Shaw Wu, Analyst, ATR

Predicting a share price of $175, Wu claimed to have heard from industry insiders that Apple has been trialling pro email support on the iPhone during "months of beta testing".  However the origins of the support are uncertain, with Wu suspecting it to be the work of an internal Apple team of developers but at the same time conceding Microsoft could have played a part themselves.

"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" Shaw Wu

Also in his prediction are better VPN support, compatibility with Enterprise software such as Customer Relationship Management systems, and improved security to ease the concerns of IT departments.  The home-brew community has created applications that satisfy many of these categories already, but such software generally requires hacking an iPhone in ways corporate customers would be unlikely to entertain.  Indeed, the market for hacked iPhones is partly what prompted Wu's enthusiasm for Apple stock; he suggests ten million of the handsets will ship by the end of the year.

[via Macworld UK]