MORGAN STANLEY: iPhone Sales Could Be Up 28% This Quarter

Apple's iPhone units could grow by 28% on a year-over-year basis this quarter, according to Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty.

Huberty's "Alphawise Smartphone Tracker" suggests Apple sells 34.5 million phones in the September quarter. The Street consensus for iPhone sales is in the low thirty millions.

A 28% increase over a year ago would be good considering Apple will only be selling new iPhones for about a week in the quarter. It's also good considering Apple's growth was at single digit levels earlier in the year.

Apple's will never post insane 80%+ growth for the iPhone again. The market is mature, and Apple already sells a lot of phones making mega-growth nearly impossible.

But 28% is a solid, growing number, if accurate.

Morgan Stanley's Alphawise tracker uses web search analysis and Google Trends to make a forecast. It sounds a little goofy, but last quarter Alphawise predicted 31.3 million units. Apple sold 31.2 million.

While this is good news for Apple, there's more to the story.

Alphawise predicts a relatively massive quarter for Samsung. It's expected to sell 47 million Galaxy phones, which would blow Apple out of the water.

Here's a chart from Huberty that compares Alphawise estimates to actual results"