Google may be rolling out its first Android phone today, but Apple is generating some buzz of its own. Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster, one of the most closely watched analysts who track Apple, has revised his estimates for the company's fourth quarter sales, and his outlook is even rosier than before.
Munster has raised his previous iPhone 3G sales estimates from 4.1 million by the end of September to a more optimistic 5 million units. Given that about 2.4 million first-generation iPhones are already in circulation and Apple's claims of one million iPhone 3Gs sold in the first weekend, the new estimate would have Apple selling 7.4 million iPhones before the start of the holiday shopping season.
That puts the Cupertino company well on track to meet its own prediction of selling 10 million handsets for calendar year 2008. In addition, Munster raised his estimates for Mac sales from 2.5 to 2.8 million, and increased expected iPod sales from 10.8 to 11 million. All in all, this should be yet another big quarter---and fiscal year---for Apple.