More Apple iPhone chatter

Posted Apr 7th 2009 7:00AM by Douglas McIntyre
Filed under: Rumors, Products and Services, Apple Inc (AAPL), Research in Motion (RIMM)

The fate of Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL) shares seems to rise and fall on rumors that the company will release a new version of its iPhone.

Apple's shares are up 35% so far this year, so it needs more sightings of iPhone upgrades to keep the stock's momentum going between now and its earnings release.

According to Barron's, Barclay's has upped it price target on the stock from $113 to $143, and increased its earnings estimates. Since Apple traded near $116 last week, the analysis may come a little late. The newspaper says that the reasons for Barclay's optimism is "anticipation of new iPhones to be unveiled in June and an ultra-portable device" expected later this year.

The analysis may be due to the success of Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM), the maker of the BlackBerry, which recently announced extraordinary earnings and forecasts. The critical difference is that most BlackBerry devices are bought by businesses for their employees, while the iPhone remains primarily a consumer device. And, consumers still appear to be unwilling to part with a dollar for almost anything.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7 Wall St. and the author of Buffett's quarterly holdings.

Tags: AAPL, Bloackberry, inthenews, iPhone, RIMM

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

4-07-2009 @ 9:09AM

Beltway Greg said...

I was waiting for this to start. Based on fundamentals Apple was ridiculously oversold and one of those fundamentals was the illness of Steve Jobs. Other than bloggers and finance professionals, and I use that phrase ever-so-lightly, very few folks flock to the Apple stores (near-term) because of Steve Jobs. The cult of Steve was created by those "finance professionals" that can't read a balance sheet or open their eyes when everyone on the train had an IPod. Let's flip the logic for the moment.
Even though Jobs returned, do you believe that the stock would have risen without the attendant improvement in the balance. sheet? Of course not. MacWorld would've been held at Chuck E. Cheese's in Encino and covered by some community newspaper. Yes, perhaps Jobs is the all to public face of the company, but give the man a break, he did start it in his garage so if he has some separation/control issues so be it. No doubt he is instrumental in many of the physical, usability decisions of the
products. Apple is a "Think Different" organization that saved the music business and created the Smart Phone market.
RIMM beats by .06 and gets a $14-15 pop sweet. But when hasn't Apple beaten by at least .06? In Dec. they beat the consensus estimates by .38! True Apple really doesn't give compelling guidance, I don't think they should give any at all, (Oppenheimer should be omitted from calls), nor does it comment on most of the drivel that is written by the "finance professionals." By conducting business in this manner it requires the analysts to actually try to do their jobs and in reality it exposes the lack of insight these charlatans possess. About two years ago Richard Gardner of Citigroup (enough said) issued a call that Apple was overvalued at $115. I offered to bet him $1 million that he was wrong. Apple went to $200. Now here we are again. Apple stores are filled with customers and analysts are emerging from their hibernations to slag on Apple. Why aren't we talking about the Storm and RIMM's options problems? When we get back to $200 which, we will within 12-15 months, they'll have to crawl back into their holes or cover JNJ. It took the illness of the CEO and founder and a near depression to bring Apple down, all it took to bring down was Apple. If IChat is on the next phone you can kiss it goodbye.