Deutsche Bank Joins the Running of the Apple Bulls
Expect another record-breaking quarter when Apple reports earnings later this month.
With strong global demand for its products and few retail stock-outs over the holidays, Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Whitmore believes the company racked up sales above already lofty expectations. And he raised his estimate on Apple today, following channel checks that revealed better-than-anticipated iPad and Mac demand and unwavering demand for the iPhone–even ahead of an expected Verizon announcement.
Over the holidays, Whitmore’s team checked up on 50-plus Apple Stores and retail partners, and found long lines, heavy store traffic and limited stock-outs at the majority of them.
“Apple continues to benefit from the strongest product offering in its history and the strong double-barreled product cycle is driving massive global demand for iPads and iPhones,” Whitmore said. “Both categories are benefiting from additional carriers, international expansion and limited competition. In addition, while we expect an onslaught of new tablet announcements at CES this year, we do not expect material competition to arrive until the second half of 2011. We have not seen anything that matches Apple’s iOS product suite in terms of form factor, usability, integrated hardware/software and the breadth and depth of the App store.”
Whitmore now expects Apple to sell 60 million iPhones in calendar 2011, up from 55 million. And that’s without a Verizon iPhone. With it, he says, iPhone sales should rise by another five million to seven million units. “We expect a CDMA based iPhone to be a significant positive for AAPL with limited cannibalization at AT&T,” he said. “Our DB colleague Brett Feldman, who covers Telecom Services, estimates that Verizon will add roughly 15M iPhones in 2011 with 6M cannibalized from AT&T.”