Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) shares rose by more than 3% on Friday as the iPhone 4S was launched in front of thousands of anticipating fans across the globe. [1] A week back, Apple had announced that it had received upwards of one million pre-orders of the iPhone 4S in a single day, surpassing the previous single day pre-order record of 600,000 held by the iPhone 4. [2] Looking at the record breaking pre-order numbers, it seems very likely that the iPhone 4S will be the best-selling iPhone yet, with sales already exceeding 4 million in the first three days since launch. [3]
In another major boost to Apple, a Netherlands judge has dismissed Samsung’s patent infringement claims against Apple, halting its bid to ban the sale of iPhones and iPads in Netherlands. [4] This victory could help Apple in settling similar legal disputes in Italy and France where Samsung is already attempting to block sales of the newly launched iPhone 4S.
See our complete analysis for Apple stock here
Reasons for the record sales
Initial reviews of the iPhone 4S may not have been good as analysts expected revolutionary updates from a newly redesigned iPhone 5 but the huge demand shows that the 4S clearly has enough exciting features to have customers still lining up in record numbers. (see Forget the iPhone 5, the 4S Has Enough Excitement to Grow Market Share)
However, one must not lose sight of the fact that Apple will be reaching a wider customer base this time since it has expanded the number of launch countries to include Australia and Canada and also increased the number of carriers in each country that sell the phone. So we will have to wait for more numbers to come out over the course of the next couple of months to be able to clearly see if the customer demand has increased from last time around and if so, by how much. (see iPhone 4S Pre-Orders Put $500 Stock Price in Sight)
It is also possible that Blackberry’s recent service outage may have encouraged some people to give up their keyboard-centric Blackberry devices for a shiny new iPhone 4S. (see RIM’s BlackBerry Service Disruptions a Blow to its Turnaround)
In view of the slew of positive developments in the company, we have a $510 price estimate for the Apple stock which is 20% higher than the current market price.
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Notes:- Apple iPhone draws hordes again, powers shares, Reuters, Oct 14th, 2011 [↩]
- iPhone 4S Pre-Orders Top One Million in First 24 Hours, Apple Press Info, October 10th, 2011 [↩]
- iPhone 4S First Weekend Sales Top Four Million, Apple Press Release, October 17th, 2011 [↩]
- Samsung loses Dutch bid to ban Apple products, Reuters, Oct 14th, 2011 [↩]
