“The most important metric for Apple (AAPL) in the quarter that ended eight days ago — likely to account for more than half of the company’s revenue for fiscal Q1 2012 — is the number of iPhones it sold from Sep. 25 to Dec. 31,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
“We’ve polled nearly 40 Apple analysts — professionals and independents — and for once they agree,” P.E.D. reports. “This was almost certainly a blow-out quarter, the scale of which is suggested by height of the rightmost two bars in the chart at right.”
P.E.D. reports, “The numbers from the 22 Wall Street analysts who have responded so far to our call for estimates… [average] 29.74 million, which would represent a year-over-year increase of 83%… The average among our panel of 15 independents — an assortment of bloggers, enthusiasts and individual investors — is 33.42 million iPhones, or an annual increase of nearly 106%.”
Read more in the full article, which includes all of the analysts’ individual estimates, here.
Related article:
Apple to webcast Q112 earnings release conference call on January 24 – January 4, 2012