Apple is scheduled on Monday to report earnings, shedding light on closely watched iPhone and Mac shipments, as Jobs & Co. will give PC execs a taste of Apple envy.
Cupertino, California-based Apple is expected to post a 38 percent jump in fourth-quarter profit with $752 million compared to a year ago, according to estimates from Thomson Financial.
Analysts expect that about 1.3 million iPhones have been purchased in the quarter and that as many as 2.2 million Macs have sold, adding to Apple’s bottom line.
“We’ve heard that small businesses have been buying the iPhones 30 to 50 at a time and using them as sales tools,” Cross Research analyst Shannon Cross wrote in a report.
Apple’s iPhone numbers come as the Mac maker continues to claw away PC market share and post blockbuster double-digit growth.
Gartner on Wednesday reported Apple cranked out 37 percent growth in U.S. PC shipments from a year ago. That figure runs in sharp contrast to the 4.7 percent overall U.S. growth rate for PC shipments.
Apple has made the biggest market share gains on a percentage basis among U.S. PC makers, according to Gartner. And Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster expects Apple to lift its worldwide Mac market share to as much as 3.3 percent in the September quarter from 3 percent in the June quarter.
Dell shipments slipped 5.5 percent in the quarter, according to Gartner.
And now it appears Apple has the mobile computing world in its palm. It’s a far cry from ten years ago, when the beleaguered computer maker was about to take its Newton organizer out to pasture.
Apple’s ubiquitous iPod doesn’t appear to be hurting either. Cross Research forecasts shipments of 12 million iPods in the quarter. Apple moved 8.7 million in the same period a year ago.
After the close of markets, Apple is expected to report $0.86 per share on revenue of $6.1 billion, compared with $0.62 on $4.84 billion a year ago, according to a survey of analysts from Thomson Financial.
Shares of Apple climbed $3.14, or 2 percent, at $173.56 in midday trading.