Ahead of next week’s earning call, there are two reports out today by analysts that paint a rosy picture of Mac, iPhone and iPad sales. The first report by Barclays Capital anaylst Ben Reitzes, claims that Apple is likely to exceed 22% growth in Mac computer shipments during the June quarter. This is despite US market data that has been less optimistic, but Reitzes suggests that overseas sales may compensate for the “somewhat muted” US sales due to the fact that many consumers are waiting for new MacBook Air models.

The second report from Brian White of Ticonderoga Securities included some revised figures and claims that Apple is likely to have sold a record of 8.5 million iPads and an impressive 17.53 million iPhones in the June quarter.

After our recent trip to Asia, we indicated that we felt our iPhone estimates for the June quarter were overly conservative, while our iPad projections were achievable and well above the Street.

Apple’s previous record for iPad sales was last years holiday quarter where they sold 7.3 million units. The iPhone sales according to White would be less than last-quarter’s record 18.65 units but still more than double the 8.4 million units Apple sold in the same quarter last year.

While many larger tech companies rely on more cyclical trends to grow sales, we believe Apple enjoys the tailwind of strong secular industry trends, hot new products and market share gain opportunities

[Via Barrons, AppleInsider]

According to a new report by Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu relayed by Fortune, the production issues that were affecting the iPad 2 supply chain over the past months have “significantly improved”, with shipments approaching 3-4 million units per month as constraints ease on the suppliers’ end. Wu now estimates 6.8 million iPads for the quarter that ends on June 25 up from 5.9 million units, as well as 17 million iPhones and 3.9 million Macs. Wu notes how the release of the white iPhone marks a “continued strong adoption” of the product, also helped by the availability of the iPhone on Verizon in the United States.

The production problems that hurt iPad shipments last quarter have “significantly improved,” writes Wu, “with better yields and higher output due to successful retooling and conversion of more production lines to iPad 2.” This would appear to contradict recent reports of shortages of both components and labor.

The iPad “still has a ways” to go to hit what Wu says is Apple’s goal of 3-4 million units per month by the second half of 2011, but is “getting closer.”

Contradicting reports posted in the past weeks indicated Apple was still facing production issues with the iPad 2 because of the Japan earthquake and tsunami, alongside other problems encountered at Foxconn’s facilities, which led FBR analyst Craig Berger to believe Apple would be unable to meet the internal goal of 40-45 million iPads produced this year. Among the technical issues mentioned by separate reports recently, the iPad 2 shortages were linked to speaker and display production issues related to light leakage problems discovered in some LG screen units shipped last quarter.

Over the past months, several rumors indicated Apple may or may not implement Near Field Communication (NFC) technology into the next iPhone, scheduled for a Fall 2011 launch. While The New York Times reported NFC would eventually find its way on the iPhone, but perhaps not the iPhone 5, others suggested the new iPhone was being built with NFC capabilities in mind, with some even claiming NFC could bring advanced remote computing features when paired to a Mac.

The NFC rumor mill was brought back to full activity this morning with a new report from Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi, who says the next iPhone won’t feature such a tech because it simply isn’t ready for mass consumer adoption, and Apple never embraced promising technologies just for the sake of having them on their feature list.

John Paczkowski at All Things Digital posted some parts of Sacconaghi’s note:

NFC-based mobile payments require NFC-capable POS terminals,” Sacconaghi wrote. “Only 51,000 retail locations support contactless payments (per Verifone’s 10K); given that First Data alone deals with 4.1M merchant locations in the U.S. this suggests current penetration of just over 1 percent of merchant locations. Clearly, a higher critical mass is needed before mobile payments would take off.

We do not expect the iPhone 5 to feature an NFC-based payments solution, and instead expect Apple will evaluate and come to market with partners or a complete solution later, perhaps when NFC infrastructure is more established,” he said in a note to clients. “We note that Apple did not release the first cloud-based music offerings, or the first 3G or LTE handsets, and entered mobile advertising only after Google bought AdMob – instead, the company has made its name from re-inventing MP3 players, smartphones and most recently tablets/netbooks, and would retain the option to eventually do the same with mobile payments.

Admittedly, Sacconaghi’s report sounds like Apple common sense — with 1% penetration in retail locations and the lack of clear standards for consumers, NFC still seems like something Apple might like, but it’s not ready to completely roll out yet. The opportunity for Apple to enable mobile payments and smart music recognition (as demoed by Google at the I/O conference) tied to iTunes accounts is huge, but if the company — as they usually do — really wants to reinvent the NFC system as most people know it, we’re going to have to wait for another generation of devices and larger consumer adoption.

Since the official unveiling at Apple’s “Back to the Mac” event in October 2010, the new MacBook Air family has seen a terrific success among consumers: the incredibly thin design, combined with the durability of aluminum and faster performances have turned the new MacBook Airs into affordable, yet powerful machines that retain the small form factor of the previous line. Moreover, the new 11-inch model has set a new trend with several users considering the machine as a tablet-sized device with the capabilities of a classic desktop computer — such as a physical keyboard, trackpad support and USB connectivity. We knew the Air was selling very well, but J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz believes the MacBook Air family could become a $2.2 billion revenue business for Apple if the current pricing model and design is maintained.

Digital Daily reports today that, according to Moskowitz, the “quasi-tablet” MacBook Air is just the beginning of a trend, and if Apple manages to keep “pricing stable” and a 420,000 sales per quarter rate (as seen in Q4 2010) the possibilities for the company to turn this line into the most successful one among Mac computers are huge.

C4Q10 was the first quarter in which the MacBook Air accounted for greater than 10 percent of total Apple PC units. More importantly, the MacBook Air accounted for 15% of total notebook unit sales during the quarter, versus 5 percent in the prior year. Even with the MacBook Air’s strong performance in C4Q10, it represented only roughly 5% of total Apple Mac units and revenues for C2010. We see ample opportunity for this percentage to increase over time, given the improved tech specs and more attractive pricing of the second-generation MacBook Air.

A report by Cnet in February hinted at an upcoming refresh for the MacBook Airs in June to include new Intel Sandy Bridge processors, which should dramatically boost performances of the MBA. Since the release of the new MacBook Pros five weeks ago, many are also speculating Apple will implement the Thunderbolt technology in the next-generation MacBook Airs. A refresh in June would play nice with Apple’s WWDC announcements, although a number of reports in the past week suggested Apple won’t announce new hardware at its developer event, focusing on Lion and an iOS 5 preview. On April 20th, Apple will release its Q2 2011 financial results.

According to at least one research firm, DisplaySearch, Apple will remain firmly as the market leader for tablets for at least the next two years with substantial market share and sales. The firm believes the market will grow at a very rapid rate, accelerated primarily by the iPad, which it believes that Apple will sell 40 million units of this year – a very significant increase from last year’s 15 million units.

Perhaps one of the most fascinating statistics that the firm is floating is that by 2016 the tablet market will be selling 260 million units per year worldwide. That is a very considerable figure considering that in 2010, 351 million PCs were shipped. Indeed if these suggested figures ring true, it could be the case that tablets in 2016 replace a number of PC sales and perhaps even exceed PC sales.

As for Apple’s competitors, DisplaySearch believes that somewhere around the beginning of 2013 would be when they match Apple’s sales volume (combining all Apple’s competitors together though), which would still leave Apple as the market leader for presumably some time. Whether indeed Apple’s competitors can catch up by early 2013 will rely heavily on how well they do this year in launching their first iPad competitors. If they fail, the tablet market could well become similar to the MP3 player market in which Apple has strongly dominated for a decade with its iPod family.

[Via The Apple Blog]

At the Q1 2011 earnings call in January, Apple posted record revenue of $26.74 billion with 4.13 million Macs sold. That was a new record for the company, which sold 3.36 million Macs in the Q1 2010 quarter. Piper Jaffray’s analyst Gene Munster believes, basing on data from research market firm NPD, that in the fiscal quarter ending this month Apple will sell between 3.5 and 3.7 million Macs — somewhere below the expectations following last quarter’s results.

For January and February, Apple is trending up 16 percent over the year-ago quarter. That would put Apple at about 3.6 million Macs for the quarter. The street consensus is for Macs to be up in the 22 percent range year over year. The 16 percent gain would put Apple within, but at the low end, of Munster’s expectations of 15 percent to 25 percent.

The fact that Apple was readying its new line of MacBook Pros in February might reflect in slowdowns in sales as consumers were anticipating the new products. But, then again, that could lead to an increase in sales in March — although the figure won’t be included in this fiscal quarter’s results.

One thing is for sure: in the past quarters, Apple usually surpassed analysts’ general consensus on unit sales and revenue, especially thanks to the explosion of iOS devices outside and in the US. Whether the new MacBook Pros and Airs could lead to similar surprises is still to be seen.

Both Business Insider and Forbes report this morning of a research note issued by Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi about a meeting he had last week with Apple COO Tim Cook, CFO Peter Oppenheimer and VP of Internet Services Eddy Cue. Sacconaghi’s notes about the interview help put some future Apple plans in perspective, like the release of a cheaper iPhone model to address a different market segment and the adoption of more carriers worldwide to further expand the iPhone’s marketshare.

Tim Cook referred to the iPhone as “the mother of all halos”, being the reason why sales of other Apple products like Macs and iPads have skyrocketed over the past years. Cook knows, however, that Apple can’t afford to not explore the possibilities offered by other types of markets, and he suggested Apple is not “ceding any market”. As for the cheaper iPhone and the rumors we’ve heard in the past weeks (the ones that pointed to a smaller iPhone as the new cheap entry-level device), this report seems to corroborate other media outlets’ theories:

The analyst says Cook “appeared to reaffirm the notion that Apple is likely to develop lower priced offerings” to expand the market for the iPhone. Cook said the company is planning “clever things” to address the prepaid market, and that Apple did not want its products to be “just for the rich,” and that the company is “not ceding any market.”

Expanding to other carriers is also a “priority” for Apple. Currently, the iPhone runs on 175 different networks versus RIM’s 550. As for the tablet market:

Cook indicated that the tablet market would be much bigger than the PC market. Sacconaghi concludes that if so, it could eventually be a $60 billion to $100 billion business for Apple alone. Cook also said he expected intense competition in tablets, more so than in smart phones, with all PC and smart phone vendors likely to participate, but he added that Apple has a strong head start, and that it has interesting new things in the pipeline.

From this research note, it sounds like Apple is really considering moving to a more variegate line of iPhones to address more markets, with more carriers. Time will tell, and hopefully we’ll know more come the WWDC in June. [via Forbes, Business Insider]

New US sales data from the NPD Group show that Apple’s Mac sales have increased 20 percent year over year, which is inline with what is required to meet analyst expectations of 3.6 million Mac sales in the March quarter.

The growth is slightly below the 22 percent growth that was predicted but analyst Gene Munster did note that Apple had seen increased international growth of the Mac platform. Furthermore the now near inevitable launch of updated MacBook’s this week will likely give the Mac sales a boost for the final month in the March quarter.

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