According to NPD, Mac sales for the month of April in North America were flat year over year. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who reported the data, said that’s a “neutral to slight positive” data point for Apple, relative to expectations for its Mac business.

Why neutral? Munster’s own forecast calls for worldwide Mac sales for the June quarter to decline about 5 percent year over year. And, last quarter, supply issues hampered sales of Apple’s newer Macs. So if NPD is seeing flat sales for April, that potentially bodes well for the current quarter.

Level Mac sales aren’t great, but they’re obviously better than down Mac sales. And now that Apple is looking to other devices like the iPad to fuel its growth, a planate trend in Mac sales isn’t really cause for much concern. As Apple CEO Tim Cook has repeatedly said, the iPad is now the company’s growth engine, not the Mac.

“With iPad in particular, we have the mother of all opportunities because the Windows market is much, much larger than the Mac market is,” Cook said back in January. “And I think it is clear that it’s already cannibalizing some, and I think there’s a tremendous amount of more opportunity there. As you know I’ve said for two or three years now that I believe the tablet market will be larger than the PC market at some point, and I still believe that. And you can see by the growth in tablets and the pressure on PCs that those lines are beginning to converge.”

And as they continue to do so, declining Mac sales will be less and less cause for concern — as long as the iPad continues to exploit that “mother of all opportunities” to which Cook referred.

According to NPD data cited by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, Mac sales rose 31 percent year over year for the month of January. Why? Simple. Said Munster, “We believe the reason for the significant improvement in the sales data is primarily due to Apple catching up with iMac supply.”

When Apple last reported earnings, CEO Tim Cook noted that iMac supplies hadn’t been what the company had hoped. “We left the quarter with significant constraints on the iMac,” Cook said. “And we believe … that our sales would have been materially higher if those constraints weren’t there.”

Cook went on to pledge that Apple would work hard to ramp up iMac production, though he cautioned that supply-demand equilibrium may be something of a moving target in the short term. “On iMac, we are confident that we are going to significantly increase the supply,” he said. “But the demand here is very strong, and we are not certain that we will achieve a supply-demand balance during the quarter.”

On its face, the NPD seems to bear this out. The increase in Mac sales is likely the result of Apple improving production, but as the two-to-three-week/three-to-four-week shipping times on the Apple Store suggest, the company is still having trouble manufacturing enough iMacs to meet demand.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster and his team have been surveying iPhone 5 availability nightly at 100 Apple stores in the U.S., and lately have found stock levels to be dramatically improved.

“Over the past 10 days, AT&T and Verizon have shown dramatic improvements in availability, while Sprint has maintained consistent availability,” Munster said in a research note to clients today. “Last night, our checks indicated that Sprint phones were in stock at 92 percent of Apple Stores, AT&T was available at 82 percent of stores and Verizon at 72 percent of stores.”

This improvement in brick-and-mortar store availability has been accompanied by a shortening of iPhone 5 shipping times from Apple’s online store. Wait times for the device, which had been two to three weeks, today dropped to two weeks. A slight improvement, sure, but another important indication that Apple is nearing the point where it can keep up with iPhone 5 demand.

Said Munster, who expects Apple to sell 45 million iPhones in the December quarter, “As we get closer to the holiday, we believe consumers will likely have the ability to walk into an Apple Store and walk out with an iPhone 5 within the next two weeks.”

Also: Sales guesses!

So, how many iPad minis will Apple move this weekend? Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster, perhaps the most widely quoted Apple analyst and a longtime Apple bull, predicts up to 1.5 million units.

But if Apple hits Munster’s number, that won’t be nearly enough to please BTIG Research’s Walter Piecyk. He wants to see Tim Cook sell three million minis, because that’s how many iPad 3′s (“New iPads,” in Apple’s parlance) Apple sold during its March debut weekend.

His logic: “We believe 3 million units is an appropriate bogey given that the Mini is being launched in nearly 3x the number of markets than the iPad 3, is at a much lower price point and sold out of pre-ordered product deliverable this weekend.”

If Apple follows form, we’ll get some sort of number in the next few days, likely Monday. Then again, Tim Cook has been deviating from past practices a bit.

*As Nicholas Carlson points out, waiting in line to buy a tech gadget seems awfully weird in the New York area right now.

Render by Martin Hajek

Consensus seems to be that the original iPad will suffer some cannibalization by its smaller sibling. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster figures Apple will sell 25 million iPads in December — of those, five million will be iPad Minis and 20 million will be iPads. Munster previously expected Apple to sell 21 million iPads, but he shaved a million off his estimate to account for consumers opting for the mini instead.

“We believe that the smaller iPad could cannibalize one million regular iPad units in December or a rate of cannibalization at 20 percent,” Munster said. “[So] for every five million smaller iPads, you lose one million standard iPads.”

That seems a reasonable prediction, though it’s a bit higher than some others I’ve seen. Janney Montgomery Scott’s Bill Choi, for example, expects a 7.85-inch iPad to cannibalize about 15 percent of standard iPad sales. Why the more modest figure? Choi takes a more accretive view of the iPad mini. “We view the smaller iPad as mostly an incremental opportunity, but see some modest cannibalization risk to the iPad and iPod touch,” he said.

For the December quarter, Choi expects Apple to sell 25.5 million iPads. Of those, he foresees six million being iPad minis, the overall total being offset by the cannibalization of one million standard iPad sales.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, an Apple bull if there ever was one, whacked 2.2 million units from his September iPhone forecast Thursday for precisely this reason. Munster’s team surveyed 100 U.S. Apple Stores over the past week and concluded that the supply of iPhone 5 is “extremely limited.” Given that, Munster lowered his iPhone forecast for September from 27.2 million units to 25 million units.

But Munster’s not yet willing to take a scalpel to the holiday quarter. By December, he figures, Apple should be able to meet demand for the iPhone 5, and when it does, investors will finally see those outrageously big sales for which they’ve been hoping. “While the supply issues for the iPhone 5 since launch are concerning in terms of the company’s ability to fully meet demand in December, we are staying with our 49 million unit estimate for the holiday quarter,” he said.

So, assuming supply and demand for the iPhone 5 hit equilibrium in the next month or so, Apple is going to be in a great position heading into the holidays. As Jefferies analyst Peter Misek observes, right now there simply aren’t enough iPhone 5s to go around. “Remember, there are 170 million post paid subscribers coming off contract,” Misek told AllThingsD. “That’s overwhelming all supply ramps. The demand here is unprecedented.”

Nor will it, most likely.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster recently surveyed 20 Apple Stores in the United States. He found iPhone 5 inventory in just four of them. Those four stores were located in smaller cities, and the few iPhone 5 units they had were for Sprint. His take on Apple’s mapping misstep? It’s not causing much user backlash. “Demand remains high,” Munster explained. “The bottom line is that consumers do not seem to be overly concerned about the shortcomings of Maps.”

Apple certainly knew this, so why apologize, particularly when such a rare and humble admission of fallibility would only draw further attention to the issue? To seize control of a media narrative run amok and to turn it into one that enhances the Apple brand that it earlier tarnished. As one source familiar with the Apple PR machine told AllThingsD, “How quickly did things go from ‘This never would have happened under Steve’ to ‘Holy shit, the CEO of the most powerful company in tech just came clean and took responsibility for a mistake?’ Hours, right?”

So while Apple’s maps mess was a clear embarrassment for the company, Cook’s empathetic and contrite apology — and the company’s followthrough on it, pointing users to mapping alternatives — have minimized damage to the Apple brand.

“Given the insatiable demand for the iPhone 5, we do not expect the map issue to impact [demand],” said Topeka analyst Brian White. “Longer term, we believe this apology will help Apple further its brand of trust with customers and it is only a matter of time before the company delivers a great map experience.”

PREVIOUSLY:

• Apple: Here Are Some Map Apps That Actually Work
• Tim Cook on Apple Maps: “We Are Extremely Sorry”
• Nokia: Map Apps Can’t Be Built Overnight. Just Look at Apple’s.
• Apple-Google Maps Talks Crashed Over Voice-Guided Directions
• Apple Maps App Takes Reality Distortion to a Whole New Level

[Image credit: Someecards]

That’s the word from Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, whose team surveyed lines outside Apple Stores in New York, Boston and Minneapolis, and found them to be, on average, 83 percent longer than those for the iPhone 4S last year. Based on the size of those launch day crowds, and Apple’s announcement Monday that it racked up 2 million preorders for the iPhone 5 in 24 hours, Munster predicts the company will sell 49 million iPhones in the December quarter, barring any supply constraints.

“We have counted iPhone launch day lines at every launch since the iPhone 3G in 2008,” Munster said in a note to clients. “We believe that based on our count of 775 customers in line for the iPhone 5 at the flagship 5th Avenue store, demand for the iPhone 5 is higher than any previous launch. We believe the line for the iPhone 5 was 70 percent greater than the line for the iPhone 4S despite Apple taking 2x as many online preorders. … Given the strength of the line for the iPhone 5, we are incrementally more confident in Apple’s ability to sell 8 million phones in the launch weekend.”

So who’s buying them? Previous iPhone owners, mostly. Wells Fargo analyst Maynard Um says that among the customers his team surveyed at Apple Stores in New York City, 32 percent were upgrading from iPhone 4S, 31 percent from iPhone 4 and 8 percent from the iPhone 3GS. Of the remainder, 8 percent were switching from BlackBerry, 7 percent from a Samsung device, 7 percent from an HTC device and 5 percent from “other.”

Photo via Eric Grant on Twitter/Instagram

But CNET’s Greg Sandoval said that the handful of folks in line just after midnight on Sunday seemed more motivated by publicity than a slimmer phone that can read out sports scores.

Which makes sense, because if they’re willing to put in a week’s worth of camping out on a city sidewalk, they probably could have mustered the effort to preorder in the middle of the night.

Analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray had estimated sales of six million to 10 million iPhone 5s in the first week, and that was back at the beginning of the month, when the device was still just a (substantially leaked) figment of Apple lovers’ imaginations.

Apple is taking an aggressive global rollout schedule for the iPhone 5, and said on Friday that it was “completely blown away” by the volume of overnight preorders. Shipping-time estimates were pushed back just an hour after the iPhone 5 became available online.

The opportunistic start-up TaskRabbit is offering a service where its errand runners will wait in line for four hours for $55 at New York City and San Francisco Bay Area stores on Friday morning.

Apple will begin taking preorders for the iPhone 5 this coming Friday, Sept. 14. A week later, on Sept. 21, it will begin selling the device in nine key markets, among them the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Japan and Hong Kong. The following week, it will bring the iPhone 5 to 22 more countries. And if all goes according to plan, the device will be available in 100 markets by year’s end. In comparison, iPhone 4S debuted in seven countries. Apple began shipping it to 22 more countries two weeks later. And by the end of 2011, it was available in 70 countries. When the iPhone 4 launched, it debuted in only five countries, and by the end of its first month at market it was still only in 18.

So Apple has given the iPhone 5 an aggressive rollout plan. And coming as it does after rumblings of supply chain contraints that some worried would limit iPhone 5 availability at launch, it’s something of a surprise.

“The schedule’s impressive,” ISI International analyst Brian Marshall told AllThingsD. “Apple must feel confident about its supply of in-cell display panels.”

Jefferies analyst Peter Misek took a similar view. “This timeline is way, way more aggressive than expected,” Misek told AllThingsD. “It should finally put to bed the unfounded view that this iPhone launch will be hugely capacity-constrained.”

More to the point, it should go a long way toward reassuring the market that Apple can meet consumer demand for the iPhone 5 and hit heady analyst estimates for the December quarter that range upwards of 45 million units. Estimates like those of Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who’s looking for the iPhone 5 to chart some serious growth for Apple in the months ahead.

Said Munster in a Wednesday afternoon note, “While we previously expected December units to shift to September for a September launch, we are maintaining our 49 million December estimate as we believe Apple can still deliver on the 32% year-over-year growth that number assumes.”

“We’re reading the same rumors and speculation that you are about a new iPhone, and we think this has caused some pause in customers purchasing.”

– Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer, July 24, 2012

Whatever iPhone sales Apple forfeited to “rumors and speculation”-delayed purchases in its disappointing second quarter, the company will likely make back in spades come the launch of the next-generation iPhone it is expected to unveil on Sept. 12. Already, analysts are predicting that pent-up demand for the device could generate some massive early sales.

Wall Street currently expects Apple to report sales of between 22 million and 23 million iPhones during the September quarter. But if Apple ships its next-generation iPhone on Sept. 21, as expected, sales could be even higher.

According to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, iPhone sales for the period could range between 26 million and 28 million units, with the bulk of that increase occurring the week of Sept. 21.

“We believe that if the 21st is the actual ship date, Apple could sell six million to 10 million iPhone 5s in the final week of September barring supply issues,” Munster speculates.

Six million to 10 million iPhone 5s sold in a week.

Those are some big numbers. And to hit them, the device would have to have a very big opening weekend, which is certainly possible. Historically, first-weekend sales of new iPhones have ramped up significantly with the debut of each successive model. The iPhone 3GS sold more than one million units during its first weekend at market. The iPhone 4 sold more than 1.7 million. And the iPhone 4S sold more than four million.

So, are sales of six million to 10 million iPhone 5s in a week plausible? It would seem so, as long as Apple’s supply chain isn’t too constrained. But with reports of delays in iPhone screen manufacturing at Sharp, that remains an open question.

“In our view, the challenge for the Android camp now is that Apple will likely pursue the other Android vendors,” Jeffries analyst Peter Misek said in a note to clients. “We believe industry players will continue to develop their portfolio of patents as this case highlights significance of having strong IP in both design and utility.”

Morgan Stanley analyst Katie Huberty views Apple’s victory over Samsung as a significant competitive advantage, one that could make Apple’s smartphone rivals a lot less nimble than they are currently. “The bigger win for Apple is the competitive ramifications if other smartphone vendors experience lengthened product cycles and are forced to alter their software and hardware to ensure unique designs relative to Apple products,” she said.

In other words, the FUD — the fear, uncertainty and doubt — created by the validation of Apple’s patents in this case makes for a troubling distraction for OEMs that must now expend additional time and effort vetting their device designs to ensure they don’t invite litigation.

This will be an obvious advantage for Apple — but likely only for a short while. Google and its Android hardware partners will develop workarounds for Apple’s IP. It’s only a matter of time.

“We believe that it is likely that other lawsuits between Apple and other handset makers move toward a settlement, given the precedent of the Samsung case,” Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said in a Sunday evening research note. “In these cases, we note that software changes are the most likely competitive outcome (aside from monetary exchanges). We do not believe further settlements are likely to hamstring Android in any serious way. We continue to be confident in our 4 year outlook on mobile device share, which assumes that iOS and Android further dominate the smartphone market with likely close to 85% share combined by 2015.”

According to the latest data from NPD, U.S. Mac sales grew 1 percent year over year for the last month of the June quarter, after falling 13 percent in April and 23 percent in May.

Now, for the full quarter, Mac sales are still down 10 percent from the same period a year ago — according to NPD. But the fact that they’ve recovered from that 23 percent decline in May is a positive sign as we head into fall and the uptick in consumer spending that it heralds.

“We believe the momentum from the June Mac refresh will carry into the September quarter,” said Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who published NPD’s sales data in a research note. “While the up 1 percent is not tremendous growth, we believe that the refreshed Macs will enable Apple to sustain a better growth profile in the U.S. through the back-to-school season.”

Munster, who expects Mac growth of 5 percent for the June quarter, is calling for Apple to ship 4.1 million Macs — in line with Street consensus. He sees iPhone shipments of 28 million to 29 million units last quarter, ahead of the 25- to 27-million-unit consensus, and iPad shipments of 16 million units, which is in line with the Street’s expectations.

Apple reports earnings on Tuesday, July 24.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster reports that NPD’s data, which counts only U.S. sales, implies that Mac sales for the March quarter ended down 5 percent year over year. And if that proves to be the case, Apple could potentially miss its Mac number when it posts financials next Tuesday. Caveat: Last quarter, Apple beat NPD data by 14 percentage points — something to keep in mind while mulling Munster’s assertion.

Anyway … the Street is looking for worldwide Mac sales of 4.5 million; Munster figures Apple likely sold less than that — somewhere between 4.1 million to 4.4 million, with sales slowed by a core MacBook Pro and iMac lineup that hasn’t been refreshed in more than a year. Those two product lines alone likely account for about 50 percent of Mac sales, so it’s certainly conceivable that diminishing consumer interest in them might affect Apple’s sales numbers.

But is this really anything to worry about?

Munster himself acknowledges that strong iPhone and iPad sales will more than offset any Mac softness. He still expects the company to beat consensus EPS and revenue estimates and, like many Apple watchers, he sees new Macs headed into the pipeline soon, following on the heels of Intel’s new Ivy Bridge processors. Said Munster, “We believe that MacBook, iMac, and potentially MacBook Air, lines could all be refreshed during the June quarter, which we believe would result in a reacceleration of Mac sales.”

An interesting question, and while it’s far too early for a definitive answer, there are some early indications of which way things are headed.

Research outfit Piper Jaffray recently surveyed a small group of public-school IT managers (18) about their mobile device deployments and found 78 percent to be testing iPads and/or Chromebooks (6 percent said they were testing Android tablets).

That bodes well for Google and Apple both, though perhaps more so for Apple. For while the IT managers surveyed seemed evenly divided over whether the iPad or the Chromebook is the better educational tool (see tables below), their preference may not be the deciding factor in which device is ultimately deployed in their schools.

As in the enterprise world, many schools are considering implementing a “bring your own device” policy as a means of fostering a one-to-one student/device ratio. And if they do, the teen demographic’s fondness for iOS devices may skew things in the iPad’s favor.

“The majority of IT managers believed that ‘bring your own device’ policies would be the major driver in achieving a one-to-one ratio,” says Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. “Given iPad’s current majority market share among teens (70 percent of teen tablet owners owned iPads), we expect iPad would be the device most likely desired by students in choosing their own devices. … Ultimately we expect school ‘bring your own device’ policies paired with the popularity of iPads among teens will lead to the iPad owning the educational tablet market.”

This according to Piper Jaffray’s 23rd semiannual survey of 5,600 American teenagers, which finds continued, rising interest for the device in the high-school demographic. The percentage of teens who own an iPhone rose to 34 percent from 23 percent in fall 2011, and 17 percent in spring 2011. Meanwhile, the percentage of those who hope to own one rose from 38 percent and 37 percent during the same time periods. The likely driver of those increases: The cheaper iPhone 4 and 3GS.

Good news for Apple, since the teen demographic is a critical component of long-term growth and, as Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster notes, “historically interest in buying an iPhone has correlated to future market share gains among teens.”

Not surprisingly, tablet interest in the teen market is also on the rise, with much of it focused on the iPad. Thirty-four percent of the teens Piper surveyed said they already own a tablet, up from 29 percent from fall 2011. Of those, 70 percent had iPads, 19 percent some model of Android tablet and 11 percent a Kindle Fire.

Among teens who don’t yet own tablets, 19 percent said they planned to buy one in the next six months, with 80 percent of that group saying they planned to buy an iPad. And though there was a 3 percent decline in respondents interested in purchasing tablets between fall 2011 and spring 2012, the fact that most of them are leaning toward the iPad reveals a clear trend here. So again, good news for Apple, as Munster notes.

“We expect Apple to remain popular with younger users, which we believe could help establish a continually growing base of loyal users,” said Munster. “We believe that as Apple continues to discount prior model iPads (i.e. iPad 2 to $399) and eventually releases a smaller screen, lower priced iPad, iPad ownership will continue to rise.”

And something co-founder Steve Jobs famously refused for years to give it.

Asked in 2010 why Apple has never paid a dividend and rarely bought back its own stock, Jobs said dividends do not increase the value of the company for shareholders. “Our goal is to increase enterprise value,” he said. “Which would you rather have us be? A company with our stock price, and $40 billion in the bank? Or a company with our stock price and no cash in the bank?”

To Jobs, the answer to that question was clear, and the reason Apple last paid a dividend in 1995 — the year prior to his return to the company.

So why pay a dividend now? And what does the decision to do so say about Apple? Is it undergoing some great philosophical shift?

Consensus among the analysts and insiders is that it’s not. The company’s attitude toward what is today the largest cash balance in the tech industry isn’t particularly new, it’s just one that wasn’t ever expressed while Jobs was alive.

As one analyst quipped, “The driving reason for the dividend? Tim Cook actually meets with and listens to investors and shareholders. Steve Jobs did not.”

That’s an observation I’ve heard time and again this morning.

“Apple would have never paid a dividend under Jobs,” Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster told AllThingsD this morning. “Apple paying a dividend is evidence that the company is making its own decisions, not just blindly following in Jobs’s footsteps.”

So Apple under Cook is something of a different animal than it was under Jobs. And as much as Cook insists that he is keen on preserving Apple’s culture, he’s not unwilling to put his own mark on it. Particularly around a long-simmering issue like this, which has become a point of exasperation for many investors.

As Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi told AllThingsD this morning, “I think the cash balance was overwhelming and the rationale for retaining it was becoming increasingly incomprehensible, particularly given the company’s capital requirements and the prevailing yield on cash.”

Ultimately, dividends are not just for slower-growth companies. They’re for companies like Apple that are still rich with ideas and poised for more growth. As Cook said this morning, “We can do this and still maintain a war chest and plenty of money to run our business. This will not close any doors for us.”

In the end, the biggest message given by Apple’s issuance of a dividend: “Under new management.”

The Macintosh TV

“In January we spoke with a major TV component supplier who has been contacted by Apple regarding various capabilities of their television display components,” Munster wrote in a note to clients today. “We see this as continued evidence that Apple is exploring production of a television. This latest data point follows January 2011 meetings in Asia that led us to believe Apple was investing in manufacturing facilities for LCD displays ranging from 3.5″ mobile displays to 50″ television displays.”

So Apple’s reportedly been shopping around for parts that might be used in TVs.

Not the hardest of evidence that the company will actually produce one. That said, the signs do appear to be adding up. Over the past few months we’ve heard chatter claiming Apple televisions have been prototyped and that Sharp has been retooling a production line at one of its factories to produce the modified amorphous TFT LCD displays that will grace them.

If that is the case, it’s entirely possible that the TV market will be the next one Apple attempts to reinvent. And if it pulls it off, the rewards could be great. Some say Apple stands to gain an incremental $50 billion to $100 billion in market cap if it produces a compelling HDTV, one that not only trumps the competition but steals market share away from it, as the iPhone has from incumbent smartphone producers.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster surveyed a few Apple stores on Black Friday and found that iPad sales per hour were 68 percent higher than they were a year ago. On average, the stores Munster visited sold about 14.8 iPads per hour, up from 8.8 iPads per hour last year, more than enough to support the analyst’s projection of 13.5 million iPads sold in the December quarter.

iPad sell-through remains “strong,” said Munster.

Over at Deutsche Bank, analyst Chris Whitmore reached a similar conclusion after checking in with more than 100 Apple retail stores and another 100 or so carrier outlets and big-box retailers. “iPad demand continues to be robust, driven by significant consumer interest in the device,” Whitmore said in a research note to clients. “Our checks indicated the iPad was a popular item on many consumers’ shopping lists over the weekend.”

While demand for the iPad was high across all models, Whitmore found it to be highest for the 32GB version with 3G, which evidently hits the sweet spot storage-wise. Also in high demand, AT&T 3G models which, unlike their Verizon counterparts, can be used internationally.

Like Munster, Whitmore came away from his Black Friday checks convinced iPad sales are tracking roughly in line with his estimate: 14 million for the December quarter.

Seems those iPad concerns were a bit overblown.

The machine is on a real growth tear. New metrics from research outfit NPD show Mac sales up 19 percent year over year in October.

That upward trend bodes well for the company as it heads into the holiday shopping season. Indeed, extrapolating from those numbers, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster figures Apple will sell between 5.1 million and 5.3 million Macs during the December quarter, accounting for about 18 percent of overall revenue for the period.

That’s year-over-year growth of between 23 percent and 28 percent. Impressive. More so, considering the state of the PC market, which these days is suffering from slowing sales growth.

It will, of course, be Tim Cook’s first earnings call as CEO since taking over the job on a permanent basis this summer. There will naturally be questions from analysts about any changes in direction, however slight, that may result following the death of founder and Chairman Steve Jobs. Don’t expect much in the way of changes, nor in meaningful answers to questions about them. As much as Jobs is missed, Apple is in the strongest business shape it has ever been in, and shows no sign of slowing down.

Today’s earnings report, which will also be the final report of Apple’s 2011 fiscal year, will only make that fact more plain. Unless something went terribly wrong — and there is no sign that anything did — it will be Apple’s first year with sales north of $100 billion.

The consensus of Wall Street analysts says that Apple will report sales of $29.45 billion, which would be an improvement of more than $9 billion and 45 percent over the same quarter last year, and profits of $7.28 per share, which would be a 57 percent jump.

But as is always the case with Apple, the consensus has a way of being conservative. Sales of the iPhone 4, despite the buzz leading up to the release of the iPhone 4S, remained strong, said Gene Munster, analyst with Piper Jaffray, in a note to clients yesterday.

Munster expects Apple to report sales of 22 million iPhones in the quarter, slightly more aggressive than some estimates, by buyside analysts, of 20 million. “We believe sales of earlier iPhone models, like the iPhone 3GS, held up through the September quarter, which suggests global customers also remained interested in the iPhone 4 head of the anticipated update,” Munster wrote. The iPhone accounts for 46 percent of Apple’s sales.

That means good things for Apple’s gross profit margin, as components used in the older models became cheaper. Munster expects a gross margin of 39 percent, beating Apple’s previous guidance of 38 percent. However, if Apple maintains the gross margin it reported last quarter — 41.7 percent — it implies a much higher overall profit of $7.68 a share, Munster said.

On the iPad front, which accounts for 20 percent of Apple’s business, Munster expects Apple to report sales of 10 million units, which he admits may not seem like meaningful growth versus the year-ago quarter. But remember that last year’s September quarter came right on the heels of the launch of the iPad 1 2. The comparisons will be tough.

And don’t forget the Mac, another 20 percent of revenue. Market research firm NPD reported Mac sales up 20 percent in each of the three months of the quarter. Munster says the street consensus implies Mac unit sales growth of 16 percent, but the NPD numbers imply growth closer to 20 percent.

Finally, all eyes will be on Apple’s guidance for the holiday quarter just ahead. Apple will likely give its usual conservative guidance, which has averaged about 2 percent below the Street on revenue and 10 percent below the street on per-share earnings. But it typically beats the Street’s estimates by an average of 9 percent and 28 percent, respectively. Right now, the consensus view on the December quarter calls for sales of $36.6 billion and profits of $8.98. Plan accordingly.

Munster rates Apple shares “overweight” — the equivalent of “buy” — with a price target of $607. Yesterday, Apple shares hit another lifetime high of $426.70, and closed at $419.99. The shares are up about 27 percent this year.

Update: I corrected my reference above to the timing of the iPad 2 release.

Short answer: Lots.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster estimates that 18.8 million iPhone 3GS users will likely upgrade to the iPhone 4S, accounting for about 18 percent of Apple’s fiscal 2012 iPhone sales.

“We believe the number of iPhone 3GS units sold before the launch of the iPhone 4 serves as a conservative proxy for iPhone users that will likely upgrade to the iPhone 4S,” says Munster. “Note that our Aug-11 survey shows that among existing iPhone users, 94 percent expect to buy another iPhone as their next phone; Apple has built an annuity of smartphone buyers.”

Indeed. And Munster’s estimate includes only 3GS upgraders. It doesn’t account for existing users of the original iPhone, iPhone 3G, or even the iPhone 4. In other words, it’s likely that upgrade sales will be even greater than Munster predicts.

We’ll see. Currently, Munster is calling for 25 million iPhone units to be shipped in calendar Q4 of this year, a number he has already conceded may be too low.

Today it is among the most valuable companies in the world, riding high on record sales of a string of hit products that have redefined personal technology and our expectations for it. In just the first three quarters of this year alone, Apple has already racked up record sales of nearly $80 billion. By year’s end they’ll likely top $100 billion.

Something to keep in mind today as the market reacts to the sad news of Jobs’s passing.

But amid the inevitable volatility in Apple’s share price the next few days, remember this: Jobs’s absence will likely have no measurable impact on Apple’s financial performance for the foreseeable future, if ever. But his legacy of innovation will — and for years to come. As I’ve written before, it’s Apple, not the iPod, iPhone or iPad, that is Jobs’s masterpiece product, a company designed to set the bar for the industry, regardless of whether he’s leading it or not.

As Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster wrote in a note to clients late Wednesday, “We believe the ethos of Steve Jobs, his vision and his work ethic, will forever drive Apple. As such, we reiterate, without hesitation, our Overweight rating on [the company's shares]. We believe Tim Cook is the ideal candidate to continue the work of the irreplaceable Steve Jobs. … While there may be concerns among investors as to whether or not Cook can continue Jobs’ streak of innovation, we believe there is no better candidate to lead the company Jobs co-founded. And in many ways, it will be Jobs and his deeply rooted vision that will always guide Apple and its leaders.”

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“The company did not announce a redesigned iPhone, which many were calling an iPhone 5 and which may disappoint some investors,” Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster wrote in a research note to clients. “That said, we believe the iPhone 4S will meet or exceed unit expectations, as it represents the first iPhone launch at two major US carriers (Verizon and Sprint) along with KDDI in Japan.”

J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz also bemoaned the lack of the so-called iPhone 5.

“We had expected the company to announce two new devices, an iPhone 5 and a 4-plus,” he said in a note to clients. “We are disappointed that Apple did not introduce a thinner form factor, but we see the feature set improvements in the iPhone 4S and the broader pricing strategy as positives.”

Moskowitz was particularly impressed with Siri, Apple’s new virtual assistant, and views it as an advantage that will raise the 4S above the pack of rivals that perpetually pursue it. “Once investors dig into Siri, we think its addition will overshadow the lack of full iPhone form factor change,” he said.

Goldman Sachs analyst Bill Shope took a similar view, arguing that the big news of the day was really the software that was on display. “Siri represents a more significant platform enhancement than we anticipated,” he said in a research note. “We believe this, coupled with iCloud and iOS 5, suggests today’s event represented a critical positive inflection point for the iOS platform overall.”

UBS analyst Maynard Um echoed Shope and went him one better, suggesting that the addition of Siri to the iPhone is one of those watershed innovations that will again change the way we interact with our mobile devices. “While some may be disappointed by largely unchanged design, Apple used its owned ecosystem to embed the Siri personal assistant throughout its OS to change the way we interact with phones. We believe Siri, iCloud & other iOS 5 features will continue to drive the next wave of demand.”

And in all likelihood they will. Sure, Apple did not meet some of the market’s hardware expectations. But what the market sometimes forgets is that it is software that truly differentiates Apple from its rivals.

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Again.

According to the latest metrics from NPD, Mac sales were up 22 percent in July and August, putting Apple on track to sell between 4.4 million and 4.6 million Macs in the September quarter.

That’s a new record.

Clearly, the July introduction of the company’s OS X Lion operating system and refreshes of the MacBook Air and Mac Mini have done much to juice demand for new Mac hardware, as Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster observed in a note to clients.

“We believe that Mac sales in the month of August benefited from new Mac products,” Munster wrote in a research note to clients. “On July 20th Apple released OS X Lion, a $29 download also included in all Mac sales on or after 7/20. Since the Lion release timing was known, Apple likely benefited from pent-up demand for Macs, which also explains soft NPD data in the month of June (+7% y/y). The company also released updated versions of the MacBook Air and the Mac mini on 7/20, which provided a tailwind for Mac sales in the month of Aug.”