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At Best Buy, it’s beginning to look a lot like Apple products will be in high demand during the all-important holiday shopping season.
During a conference call that discussed Best Buy’s quarterly earnings, Ticonderoga Securities analyst Brian White pronounced it to be “an Apple holiday season.” Officials from Best Buy concurred, saying they are optimistic about demand for mobile phones, tablets, and e-readers.
Best Buy noted the iPad specifically for its success, acknowledging that demand for the device has remained strong throughout the holiday season. This isn’t terribly surprising since the tablet market, which iPad dominates, has demonstrated triple-digit year-over-year growth.
According to White, the strength of the holiday season sales stems from the popularity of the iPhone 4S as well as the iPad 2. Best Buy not only “went out of its way to highlight strengths” from the iPhone 4S but also saw the rate of retail sales of the phone increase once it had enough phones in inventory to meet demand.
What does this mean for Apple’s quarterly earnings? Strong sales of the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 at Best Buy could propel Apple to another holiday quarter marked by an earnings record. According to their last quarterly earnings conference call that is what Apple executives expect.
Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu recently predicted that iPad sales will be lighter, because of competition with Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet.
Apple’s financial outlook, however, is still robust. Even if sales do slow Apple is still expected to sell more iPads than it did last quarter. Estimates suggest the company is going to sell more than the 11.2 million tablets it sold last quarter. It is also likely to outsell the astonishing 20.34 million iPhones sold during 2011′s June quarter.
[via AppleInsider]