Blogger Michael Arrington at TechCrunch pointed out an amazing, yet somewhat obvious, thing yesterday -- at some point next week, the number of iPhone 3Gs in use around the world will exceed the number of first-generation iPhones.

The statistics are astounding:

• 6 million original iPhones were sold in about one year
• It took 74 days for the first million first-generation iPhones to sell
• A million iPhone 3Gs were sold the first weekend they were on sale
• Sources estimate anywhere from 750,000 - 800,000 iPhones are being made each week
• Apple is on track to sell more than 40 million iPhones in the next year

This is all happening despite concerns about iPhone 3G network connectivity and battery life. If you're not an iPhone App developer now, you might want to consider signing up to join the gold rush!

[Via MacDailyNews]

We recently reported on Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster's expectations of phenomenal iPhone sales over the next year, and now he's back with more happy Apple news!

As reported on Macsimum News, Munster looked at preliminary July sales results from NPD Group, did some extrapolation, and came up with numbers showing that both iPod and Mac sales could beat Wall Street's expectations for the quarter ending September 30, 2008.

Munster's prognostications show Apple selling 2.7 - 2.9 million Macs, which is up 28% year-over-year from the same period in 2007 and beating Wall Street's expectations of 2.65 million units. He also expects iPod sales to hit 10.7 - 11.2 million units, which is slightly above Wall Street's 10.8 million unit guesstimate on the high end.

If Apple happens to hit the high end of these estimates (2.9 million Macs, 11.2 million iPods, 4.1 million iPhones, and a 32% gross margin), Munster calculates that Apple could post earnings per share in the range of $1.19, much better than the Street estimate of $1.11.

TUAW will definitely be following this monster news during the earnings call in October.

[via Macsimum News]

Despite issues with the iPhone 3G -- less-than-stellar battery life, dropped calls, crashes, etc. -- stock market analysts are very bullish on Apple's product.

BusinessWeek reported that Piper Jaffray tech analyst Gene Munster is forecasting sales of 13 million iPhone 3Gs in 2008, and a whopping 45 million on 2009. That's considerably higher than what other analysts are proposing, which is in the range of 11 million in 2008 and "only" 26 million in 2009.

The BusinessWeek article also mentioned Apple's new production goals point to 40 to 45 million handsets between now and August of 2009, which fits into Munster's forecast nicely. Of course, supply is only half of the picture. Demand for the 3G depends on Apple and carriers fixing issues quickly, decent rate plans from carriers, and killer apps in the App Store.

As Apple rolls into large and previously untouched markets such as Russia and China, forges deals with other retailers such as Best Buy, and works with developers to bring hot applications to the App Store, we'll see how the forecasts compare with reality.

How accurate do you think the projections are? Share your opinion in a comment.

Digital Daily, part of the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital site, is reporting that Apple's market value is now greater than that of Google.

The current market capitalization of Apple is US$159.37 billion, squeaking by Google's market cap of US$157.56 billion. Next in Apple's sights ought to be the old man on the block, IBM. Their current market value is around US$170 billion. It may take a while for Apple to catch up with Microsoft, though -- at the present time MSFT is worth about US$255 billion.

What's your take on when Apple will overtake IBM? I'm betting on April 1st, 2009.

Financial information from Forbes.com

A month ago, Apple was crowing about selling one million iPhone 3G handsets over its opening weekend. In a month, they've tripled that figure.

According to Fortune and analyst Michael Cote of the (eponymous and nascent, from what I can Google) Cote Collaborative, Apple has already hit the three million mark, with many investors expecting only three to four million handsets sold by the end of the quarter.

Cote is a former T-Mobile executive, who Scott Moritz says has been accurate with his predictions in the past.

It took over 10 weeks for the original iPhone to sell just one million handsets. The iPhone 3G accounts for almost a third of all iPhones sold, ever.

Cote says that meeting demand will be Apple's challenge going forward, as it enters 20 new countries on August 22 -- almost doubling its market presence worldwide. "The demand is so strong it may impact or delay the new countries coming on," he said.

Not unlike this guy, Apple is going to need avalanche insurance for the mountain of cash that it's sitting on.

According to BusinessWeek, Apple has amassed $20.8 billion in cash and short-term investments, adding nearly $1 billion each and every quarter. It's not necessarily odd for a company to have a lot of cash (Microsoft, for example, has $23 billion socked away), but it's beginning to irk the investors.

If Apple's stock price continues to rise, everyone's happy. But if it starts to dip, experts say Apple should consider investments like acquisitions (possibly in the music business) or raw materials and components.

Matt Asay of Cnet is suggesting something probably unpopular with the Cupertino crowd: tax it. Since Apple's profit margins (as a percentage of sales) are higher than Exxon's, Apple might fall prey to Congress' plan to tax windfall profits, if it becomes law.

Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said earlier this year that "Our preference is to maintain a strong balance sheet in order to preserve our flexibility." Charles Wolf of Needham & Co. says the company doesn't need more than $5 billion on hand, but he'd be more worried "if this was a sleepy company with no growth."

"That's not Apple," Wolf said.

The Apple vs. Psystar battle continues to heat up as Psystar has hired a "well-known" attorney to handle the case. Attorneys at Carr & Ferrell (who won settled the 2006 burst.com lawsuit against Apple) have filled for an extension to the suit, which gives Psystar until August 18th to make a reply to Apple. Both Apple and Psystar agreed to the extension.

You may recall that Apple filed the lawsuit in a California court earlier this month, and later demanded that Psystar issue a recall for the Mac clones. When Apple filed the suit, they claimed that Psystar had violated their license agreement and committed copyright infringement by shipping "hackintosh" PCs with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

[via ComputerWorld]

Apple posted record earnings yesterday, yet the stock still dropped amid concerns over Steve Jobs' health (I'll refrain from speculating because I find it tasteless and it's none of my business) and lower projected gross margins for the September quarter (Q4). Although Apple is famous for under-promising/over-delivering, especially when it comes to projected sales and gross margin performance, during yesterday's call, CFO Peter Oppenheimer offered up a very interesting explanation for Apple's lower estimates: new products!

Although Apple historically has a lower gross margins in the September quarter because of the Back-to-School promotion, Apple also added that a "new product that [it] [couldn't] discuss" would also result in lower gross-margins. Throughout the call, Oppenheimer kept throwing out phrases like "product transition," "new additions to the product line" and a little mantra that went something like, "Apple makes state of the art new products that the competition just can't match. When we do that earlier in an introduction, costs are higher."

We had a good time speculating what new products/changes to the product line will appear in September (or in the 4th quarter, more accurately) in the liveblog and the press has joined in that speculation today. ZDNet thinks that products will be brought out at lower prices, so that Apple can drive volume and gain marketshare. Over at eWeek, they are guessing everything from a shift in microprocessors, to low-cost portables aimed at schools to revamped AppleTVs.

The general thought (or wish) in our chat last night centered around new MacBook Pros, lower priced Airs and revamped Minis or other headless Macs.

My personal speculation is that while I expect current line products to drop in price a bit (not a huge drop, but a drop), and think it is high time for a MacBook Pro redesign, I'm going to guess that new displays are part of the "transition." The Apple Cinema Display line is not only overpriced, it is long-in-the-tooth when compared to products in its pricepoint (or even lower pricepoints). OLED displays could be expensive, and it would certainly be technology that no one else is pushing.

For me, the key to Oppenheimer's words wasn't just the talk of lower gross margins -- because that doesn't necessarily mean lower prices -- it was all the talk of "state of the art products that the competition just can't match." That signifies something that the competition (presumably, HP and Dell) isn't already selling a product or technology that Apple is looking at introducing. With the number of patents Apple has, there is plenty of room for speculation.

What are your best (or most outrageous) guesses? Leave them in the comments and we'll all see how wrong (or right) we are in September.

This liveblog will be relaying and discussing Apple's Q3 financial results. Apple's third fiscal quarter encompassed sales between April 1, 2008 and June 30, 2008. Apple reported a record-breaking quarter, with revenue up 38% year over year and Mac sales at an all time high!

You can listen in live here. Please join me in the blog to discuss the results, speculate

Here's a reminder to our readers. Apple will announce the financial results of 2008's third quarter at the end of the day today, approximately 4:30pm EDT.

Shortly thereafter (approximately 5:00 PM EDT), Apple will hold a live conference call to discuss the announcement. We'll be live blogging that call right here, so be sure and check it out. Also, you can follow along with Apple's live audio stream here.

Dust off your portfolios, stockholders! It's time to see what you've bought yourselves.

According to a survey from the Gartner group, Apple is again the third largest PC vendor in the United States. The company nosed out Acer for the second-quarter bronze. (Dell is number one, followed by HP in second place.)

Apple shipped 1.4 million units last quarter, 38 percent more than the prior quarter. In the United States, PC shipments overall grew by just 4.2 percent.

IDC research manager David Daoud credited Apple's competitors with the company's success, citing consumers' disappointment with the "lack of innovation" among other PC manufacturers. Also: Windows Vista. 'Nuff said.

But that's just the U.S. Apple still lags worldwide, selling only 3.2 percent more units abroad than last quarter. Compare that to other manufacturers, who sold an average of 16 percent more units.

Macs account for nearly 8 percent of internet-connected computers worldwide.

[Via Infoworld.]

We noted yesterday that the Mac clone maker, Psystar, was sued by Apple for copyright infringement, among other things. According to a recent ZDNet post, Apple wants Psystar to recall all of the Mac clones sold since April. "Psystar's actions have been committed with intent to damage Apple and to confuse and deceive the public," Apple claims.

"As a direct and proximate result of Psystar's infringing conduct, Apple has suffered and will continue to suffer lost sales and profits in an amount not yet fully ascertained in an amount to be proven at trial," Apple notes.

I really don't see how Psystar will be able to recover all of the Mac clones sold since April. But, if you bought one, would you send it back? I certainly wouldn't. Engadget, our sister blog, is also looking deeply into this high-profile lawsuit. They take a look at what each allegation means for both Apple and Psystar.

With all the current hype surrounding the imminent release of both the upgrade to Apple's .Mac service, now to be forever known as MobileMe, and Friday's launch of the new, improved iPhone version 2.0, let's not forget that Apple also makes other types of hardware that seems to be selling pretty well these days. In fact, according to a recent article up over at AppleInsider, Apple is apparently poised to ship 2.5 Million Macs in the Spring -- thanks, in some measure, to the poor reception of Microsoft's Windows Vista.

According to BMO Capital Markets analyst Keith Bachman, Apple's potentially strong quarter, which ends in June, can be attributed to several factors. Among them, user dissatisfaction with Vista. "Thus far, user satisfaction ratings for Vista have been weak, and startup times for Vista have been known to be much slower than the Mac OS X," Bachman said in the article. "Thus, more than 50% of recent customers buying Macs in Apple retail stores are first-time buyers."

In addition, the analyst added that this problem could help Apple's bottom line well into 2009 and could potentially improve the company's current world market share, raising it to 3.9% or higher. This is good news for those of us who remember the time, not so long ago, when most in the press and analysts like Bachman predicted Apple's certain demise. Still, even with this good news, we still need to hope Apple doesn't do something to hurt itself -- like bungle the .Mac to MobileMe transition or run out of shiny new iPhones at 8:30AM on Friday. That would not be a good thing.

In another chapter in the scandal surrounding Apple's choice to back-date options granted to key executives (including Steve Jobs), two plaintiffs have filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court against two former executives and members of Apple's board of directors.

Apple was sued similarly in 2007 by the New York City Employees' Retirement System, and the case was dismissed.

The suit names Steve Jobs, former counsel Nancy Heinen, and board members William Campbell, Millard Drexler, Arthur Levinson, and Jerry York. It contends that the accused intentionally filed false documents, hiding stock option grants to the higher-ups.

Apple, in an internal investigation, cleared Jobs of any wrongdoing, leading many to speculate that the company threw Heinen and former CFO Fred Anderson under the proverbial bus to protect the company's image.

[Via Macworld.]

Once again, it's that time of year when tourists flock to the beaches, students leave their books behind and Apple executives describe how they've made much more money than the rest of us.

Earlier this week, Apple announced that their third-quarter earnings call will take place on July 21, 2008, at 2 p.m. Pacific time. It's been an up-and-down quarter for Apple's stock. It should also be noted that this will be the first report to contain information on sales of the iPhone 3G, assuming they do go on sale on July 11th without a glitch.

We'll be live blogging the call, so be sure and check back on the 21st. See you then!