iPhone News Updated

Big Apple Q1 seen paced by iPad, iPhone

Big Apple Q1 seen paced by iPad, iPhone

Analysts expect Apple Inc. to report at least a 47 percent increase in earnings on a 55 percent increase in revenue, paced by strong iPad and iPhone sales.

That high bar for Tuesday’s financial update from Cupertino would mean $5.38 a share in earnings on $24.3 billion in revenue.

The sole product line that isn’t expected to show a strong gain is the one that started the company’s successful departure from what had been its core computer line, the iPod. With more consumers opting to store their music and video on their iPads and iPhones, sales of the the still popular portable player are expected to be down about 5 percent to 20 million units.

But sales of the iPhone are expected to grow by 82 percent to 15.8 million units, even without the big surge that is expected in the current quarter when Verizon Wireless begins to sell the groundbreaking smartphones.

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is expected to post 6.2 million iPads in the quarter but there are no comparable statistics in the year before quarter because they weren’t being sold until the company’s third quarter of fiscal 2010 in April.

Despite the fact that strong iPad sales are apparently taking a toll on PC sales, the company’s Mac line isn’t expected to show much of that sort of cannibalization. Analysts expect Apple to report it sold 4.1 million Macs in the quarter.

All of these figures are above Apple’s own projections, which are typically conservative. The company regularly blows past what analysts project, as well.

Anything less would probably dull the stock’s roaring pace which made Apple the second most valuable publicly owned company in the world in the quarter, with a market cap of about 320 billion.

[Thanks: http://www.bizjournals.com]

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