Apple's Q4 earnings are out, records set for revenue, earnings, and sales

[famousringo]

rocketpig said:

famousringo said:

Bah, I totally beat you to this thread.

It's probably good that you made it, though, since my threads always come with a cloaking device pre-installed.

I'll just note that Apple will probably sell around 20 million iPhones in the holiday quarter, which would round out iPhone sales to a cool 50 million units this calendar year. Throw in the iPod Touch and iPad and you're looking at probably a little less than 90 million iOS devices for the year.

I think they'll do better than that. They just sold 27m iOS devices over the summer. It's possible they could do 40m or more over the final quarter of the year.

I think you're being just a little over-enthusiastic. Not all of those 9 million iPods sold are Touches. An estimated 1/3 of them don't run iOS. So sales of iOS devices this quarter are more like 24-25 million units.

Other than that, yeah, 40 million is doable, and would work out to about 90 million devices this year. Here's the breakdown:

iPhones: 20 million

This is really dependant on supply. Last year, iPhone sales jumped around 20% from Q3 to the holiday quarter, and there's a lot of pent-up demand right now, but I'm just not sure if Foxconn can ship 20 million phones in one quarter. If they can, they will be bought.

iPod Touches: 12 million

Last year, Apple sold 21 million iPods in the hoiday quarter. Factor in a YoY decline of 10% and chop off 35% for non-Touch iPods and you are left with around 12 million units.

iPad: 8 million

Here's the real wild card. Apple has stated that it wants to be producing 3 million iPads a month by the end of this year, but looking at this last quarter, I'm just not convinced that it's possible. Apple has been aggressively expanding iPad distribution, adding Target, Amazon, Verizon and AT&T to their retail list. The iPad certainly has the potential to be the must-have consumer gadget of this holiday season, but as an effectively new device category, its demand is untested.

Apple could do 40 million devices, but all their stars need to align. It's gonna be close...