Apple’s iPhone continues to beat out Android as the best selling smartphone platform in the US, showing 51.2% of the market for a twelve month period which ended December 23 of 2012. According to the data released by market-analyst Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, Android has remained stable in market share since the same period of time in the previous year, at 44.8%, while Windows phone brings up third place at 2.6 percent of smartphone sales sold in that time period.

CNN Money polled 67 separate analysts, 39 pros and 28 indies, on their thoughts about Apple’s upcoming financial report, due on January 23rd. The consensus among them all is that Apple is most likely going to report the best quarter it has ever had. Ever.

Apple just unleashed the iPhone 5 on China today so things should be going really well for the company on Wall Street as well, but they’re not. According to initial reports, the debut of the iPhone 5 has been somewhat muted thanks to a snowstorm hitting Beijing and a pre-order requirement to prevent rioting.

Adding to Apple’s pain, the company’s stock hit a 10-month low today and is trading at $511.58 – the lowest its been since February.

When Tim Cook jumped on stage yesterday and ran through all the little statistics about how extremely successful Apple’s been over the last few months, he put some added emphasis on the fact that Apple just sold their 100 millionth iPad.

100 million iPads in just over two years is absolutely nuts. 100 million of any product sold in two years is insane. But it turns out that analysts weren’t thrilled that Apple just sold their 100 millionth iPad two weeks ago, because it means iPad sales are starting to decline when analysts were expecting them to sell more.

As a publicly traded company, Apple submits its financial reports every quarter to let their investors know how well the company is doing. However, Apple is under no obligation to share specific financial results about each of the individual products it sells, data that it is still trying to protect via the court in the Apple v Samsung case in Northern California.

However, rabid interest in the specifics continues unabated. In a survey reported today, CNN Money asked 61 Apple analysts, 31 from Wall Street and 30 independent analysts, what their estimates were for specific device sales in the quarter that just ended on September 29, 2012. Turns out, the analysts estimates were all over the place when it came to predicting the number of iPads sold.

Until Tim Cook climbs onto the roof of Apple’s Cupertino headquarters and shouts, “we will never build an iPad mini” at the top of his voice, the rumors will continue to circulate. The latest comes from “various analysts” who claim the upcoming iPad mini will feature a 7.85-inch IGZO display from Sharp, and will start at just $249.

Apple is reportedly gearing up to launch its much-anticipated “iPad mini” during the third quarter of 2012 in an effort to “counter attack” the upcoming Windows 8 tablets. The 7.85-inch device is expected to cost between $249 and $299, which will also allow it to compete with cheaper Android devices from the likes of Amazon.

Apple introduced its new A5X processor in the third-generation iPad yesterday, and based on the company’s previous moves, we’re expecting the chip to appear in its next iPhone. However, that may not be the case. According to analysts, the chip requires too much power to be used in the iPhone, and Apple will need to create a more power-efficient chip with a new manufacturing process for its next smartphone.

It’s amazing what you see when you look closely at numbers, and super-analyst Horace Dediu of Asymco looks closer than most. Parsing some of Tim Cook’s keynote speech at Goldman Sachs earlier this week, he did some digging came up with the incredible graph you see above.

Wall Street analysts can be an odd sort. Apple is seen as a red hot company producing must-have products, yet many observers of the Cupertino, Calif. tech giant are downright wet blankets when it comes to Apple’s future. Monday, a fellow analyst said pessimists predicting Apple will grow -2 percent must live in some alternate universe where up is down and iPhones don’t sell.