Business Insider
Tim Cook
If this is correct, it sets Apple up for another gigantic quarter of iPhone sales. Sales would be up 14%. Apple shipped 43.7 million iPhones in the same period last yera.
(Last year's quarter was the first quarter Apple was selling the iPhone with China Mobile, the largest carrier in the world. This makes this quarter a tougher comparison.)
If Apple sells 50 million phones this quarter, it would be Apple's third biggest iPhone quarter ever. The biggest happened last quarter when it sold 74.5 million phones. The second biggest was the holiday quarter of 2013 when it sold 51 million units.
DigiTimes has been fairly accurate lately in estimating iPhone sales.
When the iPhone 6 was first released, DigiTimes said Apple was ordering ~80 million iPhones for the end of the year. When you add the tail end of the September quarter to the December quarter, 80 million is pretty much on the money.