Wall St hopes for monster iPhone 4S sales to boost Apple results

New York: Analysts are expecting big things from Apple this quarter as the company prepares to report its first-quarter earnings. The US media bantered that President Obama’s State of the Union address won’t receive as much scrutiny on Tuesday as the state of Apple.

The results will be the first since a rare earnings miss in 2011 which followed Steve Jobs’s death in October last year. It was the first time Apple’s financial results fell short of expectations in five years. The official cause of the shortfall was lower-than-expected sales of the iPhone, as customers held off on purchases while waiting for the launch of the new iPhone 4S.

Things are looking decidedly cheery this time round. Analysts polled by FactSet predict the company will bring in earnings of $10.04 per share and revenue of $38.92 billion.

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This is the first quarter to include sales of the iPhone 4S which has been a big deal in the United States and abroad. Analysts are expecting monster sales of the smartphone when Apple posts its results on Tuesday.

This quarter, as Fortune’s Phililp Elmer-Dewitt noted, even the most conservative analysts are projecting record iPhone sales. Of the nearly 40 analysts he polls every quarter, the lowest estimate for iPhone sales was 25.2 million. The iPhone 4S posted record sales of more than 4 million handsets the first three days it was sold and Apple has since introduced the device in more than 90 countries including India (where it is horrendously expensive compared to what it costs in the US).

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Sales of the iPad 2 are expected to be strong as well, thanks to what’s believed to have been a strong Christmas holiday season. The Pew Internet and American Life project released a report on Monday that found tablet and e-reader ownership doubled over the course of the holiday season as people exchanged Christmas gifts.

Canaccord Genuity analysts also found in their research that the iPad 2 remains the top-selling global tablet. Its next closest competitor, the analysts said in a January 5 research note, is Amazon’s $199 Kindle Fire, which costs half the price of the iPad.

When Steve Jobs was alive, Apple suddenly shelved plans to build a sprawling technical centre to handle support for Macintosh computers and other Apple gear in Bangalore in 2006. Although part of the circuitry that powers the iPod was developed in Hyderabad by engineers working for PortalPlayer Inc, Apple never intended to outsource high-end software development to Bangalore. Unlike a lot of tech companies, Apple zealously does all its R&D and product development near its California headquarters.

Apple has largely ignored India as a home for engineering talent although it still aims to sell to India’s flourishing market.