Apple on Track for Record Quarter

By Darrell Etherington, GigaOM

Analysts aremaking bold predictions about Apple's(AAPL) performance during itscurrent quarter, saying the company has had its “bestNovember ever.” That’s according to Ticonderoga’sBrian White; Canaccord’s T. Michael Walkley also crowed aboutApple’s recent sales success, albeit with a caveat.

White issues a monthly “Apple Barometer” to helpinvestors gauge its success, using data gathered from supply chainsources to anticipate Apple’s sell-through numbers. Thebarometer was up 17% during November versus the previousmonth, whereas normally it tends to gain around only 2% permonth. Even though White says October wasn’t as strong asusual for Apple, the gain for November was still very strong anddue mostly to amazing sales on Apple’s part for themonth.

Over at Canaccord, Walkley didn’t have all good news forApple watchers. In a note Tuesday, he said the firm expectsAmazon's(AMZN) Kindle Fire to take away as much as 20% ofApple’s tablet unit share between the third and fourthquarters of 2011. That’s not necessarily that bad for Apple,however, since the iPad is still projected by Walkley to sell moreunits than it did in the third quarter of 2011, with Amazon’sdevice just adding to the global tablet shipment forecast total.Plus, Apple seems to anticipate that moreKindle Fire sales should lead to more iPad sales down theroad.

The iPhone, however, is unquestionably a success for Apple,prompting Walkley to bump his sales estimate of Apple’ssmartphone from 29 million up to 30.5 million for the quarter,which is huge compared to the 17.1 million Apple sold last quarter.The iPhone’s sales success should see it gain backsignificant market share from Android competitors, according toWalkley.

Apple alw! ays has a strong holiday quarter, but with the lateintroduction of the iPhone 4S this year, and the continued successof the iPad 2, we definitely should see some entirely unprecedentednumbers this time around.

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