As we head into next week’s Apple third-quarter financial results, one analyst dismisses rumors that the tech giant’s meteoric rise is leveling off. Indeed, the Apple Express has “plenty of gas in the tank.”
Although Apple’s rising shares have hit some speed bumps, J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz attributes the slowing to “iPhone 5 vs. iPhone 4-plus soothsaying and the speculation over iPad shortages.” Moskowitz said talk of iPad 2 shortages are “overdone”, noting the Apple Store recently improved tablet shipping delays to 3-5 days, down dramatically from one-to-two weeks.
Given the lack of any shortage, Moskowitz said Apple is likely to beat Wall Street estimates July 19. J.P. Morgan is estimating 17.5 million iPhones were sold during the June quarter and 6.7 million iPads. Those projections could be low, Moskowitz told investors. He suggests actual sales could be higher. The Cupertino, Calif. company likely will report selling 3.9 million Macs, but that figure could also turn out to be low, affected by low parts prices, excepting hard disk drives.
In line with other expectations, the analyst firm sees Apple releasing an “iPhone 4-plus” in August or September, keeping the iPhone 5 under wraps until 2012. The popular MacBook Air will also be updated, including a possible price cut.
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.
