Apple's earnings: The Street's big miss

The professional analysts were bested -- once again -- by the bloggers

[Originally posted Jan. 29, 2010, on Fortune.com]

There's a good reason most Wall Street analysts don't publicly review their predictions after the fact. It's called self-preservation. Who wants to advertise how badly they misunderstood the companies they follow?

Case in point: Apple (AAPL), and the quarterly report it issued Monday afternoon. Apple management gave ample warning that it wanted to change its accounting procedures under the rules revised last fall -- recognizing iPhone revenue when it comes in, rather than spreading it out over 24 months (see The day Apple released its revenue bomb).

Yet nearly half the professional analysts we polled missed the boat entirely -- never bothering to publish estimates for the so-called non-GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) numbers that pushed Apple's revenue to a record $15.68 billion in its first fiscal quarter of 2010.

And those who did were all over the lot, getting as many calls wrong as they got right. None of the professionals hit as close to the mark as our three favorite independent analysts: Turley Muller, Andy Zaky and the blogger who calls himself deagol.

Let's look at the numbers:

How many Macs did Apple sell? (Q1 2010)

The second in a series of previews of Apple's results for the first fiscal quarter of 2010


[Originally posted Jan. 5, 2010 on Fortune.com]

On Monday we sampled the Street's expectations for Apple's (AAPL) iPhone sales in the fiscal quarter that ended on Dec. 26. (See here).

Today we look at analysts' Q1 2010 estimates for the product that contributes more to the company's bottom line than any other: the Mac.

As with the iPhone, there is a huge range in the unit sales numbers we've collected, from a high of 3.31 million from Broadpoint AmTech's Brian Marshall to a low of 2.79 million from Technology Insights' Nehal Chokshi. (See below the fold.)

How many iPhones did Apple sell? (Q1 2010)

A preview of what Wall Street expects from Apple's Q1 2010

[Originally posted Jan. 3, 2010 on Fortune.com]

Apple's (AAPL) first fiscal quarter ended on Saturday, Dec. 26, front-loading the company's 2010 results with what is likely to be its biggest quarter of the year.

We won't learn the actual results until they are released later this month, but most analysts who follow the stock have already made educated guesses about how that quarter went, starting with Apple's fastest-growing product line: the iPhone.

We've gathered some of those estimates below, and will add to the list as more come in. They range from a high of 11.3 million iPhones from Broadpoint Amtech's Brian Marshall to a low of 7.6 million from Morgan Keegan's Tavis McCourt.

Even at low end, that would represent a 10.8% increase from the previous record of 7.37 million iPhones, set last September.

Below the fold: The estimates (iPhone unit sales in millions).