After a record-breaking first day of advanced sales, the iPhone 4S is expected to sell 4 million units during its first weekend, four times greater than the iPhone 4’s initial sales, according to a Friday report.
A survey of Wall Street analysts by Bloomberg finds “most estimates” for first weekend sales to be between 2 million and three million units. Yankee Group analyst Carl Howe, however, is predicting 4 million handsets.
Friday marks the first day the iPhone 4S can be purchased following presales that Apple has said topped 1 million orders. All three U.S. carriers — AT&T, Verizon Wireless and Sprint — also reported selling out. Along with online, major retailers such as Best Buy, Target and Radio Shack are offering the iPhone 4S, along with deals encouraging consumers to trade-in previous versions of Apple’s smartphone.
Analysts expect Apple will sell around 25 million iPhones during the fourth fiscal quarter, which ended last month. Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster believes the tech giant could sell more than 25 million handsets during the previous quarter. Susquehanna Financial Group analyst Jeffrey Fidacaro told investors Friday he forecasts Apple selling 21.5 million iPhones during the fourth quarter and 27.1 million iPhone 4S units in the fourth quarter of 2012.
Apple is expected to announce fourth quarter numbers on October 18.
Fellow Susquehanna analyst Christopher Caso takes to task those who recently said Apple’s iPad production was slowing. Instead, Caso believes Apple “pulled in” some iPad production into the third quarter to prepare for the holiday period and the iPad 3. The third-generation tablet’s production should begin in “late-4Q” with between 600,000 to 1 million units produced during the fourth quarter, the analyst writes.
