Apple sells 2 million new phones, shares touch $700

Apple said on Monday that pre-orders
outstripped initial supply but it would deliver most phones as planned
by Friday, the first day of delivery. Many would not be available until
October, however.
It is not unusual
for Apple products to sell out the first day but this time around Apple
has doubled its first-day sales record. Last October, the company
booked 1 million orders for the iPhone 4S, in the first 24 hours. That
had beaten Apple's previous one-day record of 600,000 sales for the
iPhone 4.
The strong preorders
could mean a huge holiday quarter for Apple as the iPhone -- its marquee
device -- accounts for half of Apple's revenue.
Apple
will make initial deliveries of the iPhone 5 by September 21 in the
United States and most of the major European markets, such as france, Germany and the United Kingdom. The phone then goes on sale on September 28 in 22 other countries.
Given
the demand for the device so far and Apple's aggressive rollout of it
internationally, some analysts raised their sales and earnings
estimates.
"The pace of this iPhone
5 roll-out is the fastest in the iPhone's history and points to a big
December quarter," said Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes, who expects Apple
to sell 45.21 million iPhones in the December quarter, up 22 percent
from last year. Reitzes said his estimates "could still be
conservative."
Canaccord Genuity
analyst Michael Walkley said he now expected Apple to ship 9 million to
10 million iPhone 5s from Friday to September 29, the last day of its
fiscal 2012 year.
He also raised
his earnings per share estimates for the September and December quarters
to $44.32 from $43.25, and to $56.96 from $56.90, respectively.
Wall
Street analysts on average expect Apple to earn $44.25 per share in the
December quarter, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S estimates.
The
new phone, which will appear in stores on Friday for walk-in purchases,
has a larger, 4-inch screen and is slimmer and far lighter than the
previous model. The iPhone 5 supports the faster 4G network and also
comes with a number of software updates, including Apple's new in-house
maps feature.
Apple began taking
orders for the iPhone 5 at midnight Pacific time on Friday (0700 GMT
Saturday). Shipping dates for the smartphone slipped by a week within an
hour of the start of preorders.
On
Monday morning, Apple's U.S. store, at www.apple.com, showed preorders
placed at that time would take two to three weeks to ship.
AT&T SETS SALES RECORD
Wall Street is also keeping a close eye on the supply of the smartphone.
"We
still believe Apple is facing significant production constraints due to
a move toward in-cell display technology, which pushes a significant
amount of units into the December and March quarters," Reitzes said.
One of Apple's key suppliers for screens, Sharp Corp, is struggling with high costs and scrambling to raise funds to pay debt.
The
latest iPhone comes as competition in the smartphone market has reached
a fever-pitch with Apple up against phones that run on Google Inc's
Android software. Android has become the most-used mobile operating
system in the world, while Apple's key supplier and rival, Samsung
Electronics, has taken the lead in smartphone sales.
But
Apple appears to be making headway into the corporate market, a
traditional stronghold of now-struggling Canadian company Research In
Motion
Yahoo Inc has instituted a
new corporate policy that allows employees to pick from a host of
smartphones, including the iPhone 5 and Android-based phones such as
Samsung's Galaxy S3. Yahoo, which previously gave out RIM's Blackberry
phones, will no longer support them, according to Business Insider blog,
which cited an internal memo from Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer.
Yahoo declined to comment.
AT&T,
the No. 2 U.S. mobile service provider, said demand over the weekend
had made the iPhone 5 the fastest-selling iPhone the company has ever
offered.
AT&T did not disclose
how many iPhones it had sold, but said the iPhone 5 was still available
for preorder and would go on sale September 21 at AT&T retail
stores.
All the phones carriers,
including Verizon Communications Inc and Sprint Nextel Corp, showed
delays of up to three weeks in shipping the phone.
European
carriers also reported brisk sales. France Telecom's Orange said
bookings for the new phone "have been very strong, breaking the records
of what we saw for the iPhone 4 or 4S." But the carrier said it could
deliver preorders on time.
Analysts have forecast that Apple will have sold more than 30 million iPhones, including older models, by the end of September.

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