Jefferies Sees Apple's (AAPL) iMessage Gaining Market Share Over RIM's (RIMM) BBM

Jefferies is maintaining its Buy rating and $500 price target on shares of Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) following the conference on to introduce the iCloud.

The firm believes that this was the first round of cloud service announcement with round two coming in the fall and the third sometime in 2012. The next round will be more focused on video.

AAPL introduced its iMessage, a direct competitor of Rim's (Nasdaq: RIMM) Blackberry Messenger, and the firm feels it will begin to gain market more share in the corporate world because of this. It also notes that the launch of a low-cost iPhone in the Fall targeted at prepaid and emerging markets will only further undermine RIM.

The company announced that as of June 6, 2011 25 million iPads has been sold, which implies that 7.6 million will be sold for the quarter if market trends remain the same.

Apple's new OTA or over the air setup will allow people without PCs to buy and setup iPhones and iPads. This is a great advantage for moving into emerging markets.

For more ratings news on Apple click here and for the rating history of Apple click here.

Shares of Apple closed at $338.04 yesterday.

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