Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry thinks Apple will drop a surprise on developers at its annual World Wide Developers Conference in June when it announces Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2010 can build native iPhone apps, and that company CEO Steve Ballmer will be on stage for the event.
Mr. Chowdhry thinks Mr. Ballmer will handle the Visual Studio demo during the Steve Jobs-hosted keynote event, and that if Microsoft’s CEO can’t be there, Microsoft server and tools business boss, Bob Muglia will show off the company’s tools.
Along with native iPhone app compiling, Mr. Chowdhry thinks Visual Studio 2010 will also be able to build Mac OS X-compatible applications.
While not impossible, Mr. Chowdhry’s predictions seem highly unlikely, especially since Apple recently changed its iPhone developer agreement to prohibit third-party coding environments that don’t natively access Apple’s APIs. Assuming his prediction is accurate, Apple would’ve been working secretly with Microsoft to make sure Visual Studio 2010 could link directly to its APIs, which doesn’t seem very likely, either.
Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference starts on June 7 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Mr. Jobs will host the keynote event where we’ll see how right — or wrong — Mr. Chowdhry’s predictions are.
[Thanks to Barrons for the heads up.]