Apple Earnings Preview

Apple, Inc. (AAPL) reports earnings today after the market close, which, after Intel's (INTC) decline in profits yesterday, should prove illuminating in how successful Apple has been at distinguishing itself from the technology pack. We're on record predicting 23 million iPods and nearly $8 billion in revenue, which is quite a stretch for us to believe. But given we have yet to make a projection for Apple quarterly sales that the company hasn't surpassed, it will be interesting.

One area that I'm particularly interested in is seeing how MacBook sales have been going. Given how many of them I see in airport lounges and Internet cafes, it's feeling like that product is doing better than expected. This is one area where I suspect there may be some upside surprise over and above the 1.9 million Macs I've predicted Apple sold in Q4.

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Three years of iTunes and iPods sales

But the iPod number is the one to watch. Despite a year's worth of predictions that the iPod killer cometh, no iPod killers have actually made even a dent in Apple's domination of music players. And given that nearly every kid I know either got an iPod for Christmas or already had one, and that Apple hit a new low price point with its shuffle this Christmas, the 23 million iPod number seems almost possible. And if nothing else, those types of numbers could really boost that graph above I used to refute Forrester's numbers last month. We'll see after 5 PM Eastern time.

AAPL 1-yr chart: