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"
Morgan Stanley