Here's a report from Fortune that says Wall Street estimates of Verizon and others' iPhone sales are off - but which way?
- - - - - - Wall Street's low-ball iPhone estimates bump into reality By Philip Elmer-DeWitt January 5, 2012
Reports from Verizon and AT&T suggest they could be off by as much as 45%
UBS' Maynard Um has built a spreadsheet for Apple (AAPL) in which he assumes the company sold 30 million last quarter -- some 800,000 unit higher than the 29.2 million average of 20 Wall Street analysts we polled over the weekend.
But when he totes up the sales numbers coming in from Apple's U.S. carriers, his 30 million estimate doesn't sound quite right. On Wednesday, for example, Verizon (VZ) reported sales of 4.2 million iPhones in the Christmas quarter, more than twice the 2 million the carrier activated in the September quarter.