Apple is scheduled to release its official numbers for the fiscal second quarter later this week. A review of analyst expectations appears to again set the stage for the Cupertino, Calif. company producing a blow-out quarter with both professionals and bloggers predicting higher revenue and sales.
In January, Apple’s finance chief Peter Oppenheimer guided $22 billion quarterly revenue, slightly lower than the Street consensus of $23.27 billion, but quite lower than blogger-analysts who predict revenue of $25.30 billion. As we’ve reported, the events in Japan could temporarily hurt Apple, bringing its usually artificially-low revenue guidance more in line with reality. Also, what do the pros and and amateurs expect for product sales? We’ll get into that after the jump.
According to a Fortune poll, the professional consensus for quarterly sales is 16.17 million iPhones, 9.9 million iPods, 3.6 million Macs and 6.2 million iPads. As we’ve reported, some analysts believe iPad numbers will not be as robust as possible partly due to the iPad 2 being available only a short period of the three-month second quarter.
Bloggers only seem to differ when it comes to iPhone and iPad quarterly sales figures. This group sees 18.03 iPhones sold in the second quarter and 6.77 million iPads sold.
How will each group fare?
Yair Reiner, analyst with Oppenheimer, was the top-ranked professional analyst for the first quarter, coming in No. 10 in the Fortune list. This time, Reiner expects Apple will announce quarterly revenue of $22.89 billion, compared to Apple’s $22 billion guidance. He also predicts 16 million iPhones, 9.7 million iPods, 3.4 million Macs and 5.5 million iPad sales.
Patrick Smellie, analyst with the Apple Finance Board, was ranked No. 1 by Fortune for predicting the first quarter outcome. This time, the unaffiliated analyst predicts Apple will report $25.72 billion in revenue and sell 18.30 million iPhones, 10 million iPods, 3.6 million Macs and 6.8 million iPads.
Which group has the better ear to the ground? We’ll know Wednesday afternoon, when Apple releases its second quarter financial report.
[Fortune]
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
3 responses to “Apple’s Second Quarter: Wall Street, Bloggers Expect More Than Cupertino”
I remember when the amateurs were better than the pros at predicting the results. Just goes to show… you do have to love what you do.
Am I alone in the sentiment that Apple has to get its act together and do something to get those Mac numbers higher. 3.6 million is pretty piddly considering their competitors numbers. I’d love to see OSX go after Microcraps jugular and take a bite out of Windows market share.