With online shopping taking a hit this holiday season, Amazon.com is making a big push to get people buying.

So how will the giant retailer fare in the economic downturn?

With features like the new iPhone shopping application -- which lets people snap photos of items in a store, get pricing and buy later on Amazon.com -- the online retailer is "armed to beat the recession," argues a story today in BusinessWeek.

The story, which features CEO Jeff Bezos' smiling mug, acknowledges we're in the midst of a "a bleak period for retailers" but noted Amazon's "scale, strong reputation, and broad product offerings" and said the company is poised to benefit once the economy improves.

The piece highlights Amazon's commitment to research and development, which has resulted in features like the Universal Wish List, which lets users pull in products from other sites on the web, and Windowshop View, which lets people to browse products in 3-D as if they're strolling down an aisle in a store.

But it's the iPhone app that holds particular promise, according to BusinessWeek, for its ability to convert brick-and-mortar shopping into online sales for Amazon (the app had some initial kinks, as my colleague Todd Bishop noted in an earlier post).

The story also notes Amazon's growing competition from big-box store giant Wal-Mart, which has been investing heavily in its website and can draw on a vast supply chain network.