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iPhone Sales Drastically Surpass Q4 Consensus; Apple Reaches 10m Goal

I don't care - AAPL will go up, the question is only when. $25 of the share price are held in cash, iPhones are flying off the shelves and a major product transition is about to arrive that will have a similar effect to the iPhone - namely a technology that others can't match easily, or cheaply, or any time soon.
Witness the iPhone competition - it's still far behind over a year after the 1G was introduced.
Add to that a still pretty large untapped international potential for iPhones and Macs. Macs are at 8% in the U.S. and at 3% in Europe and Asia. How much is an almost guaranteed growth from 3% to 8% in EU and Asia worth?

Disclosure: I am getting all the AAPL I can at these discounted prices.

Why Apple Stock Is Poised To Go Flat - At Best

Others have already pointed out the weakness in some of these arguments. I think life expectancy for a 52 year old billionaire is pretty outstanding - I'm not worried.

What I want to add is Apple's near-unlimited potential.

In phones, it can take apart Nokia and others with ease because it has better software and better hardware design, with the latter being the single most important sales factor for mobile phones. U.S. analysts generally have no clue about this though because of the retarded - or, let's say, very different - nature of the U.S. mobile phone market.

In international PC sales, Apple is several percentage points behind its US market share - in many countries, they're not even trying. Huge potential.

Halo continues to have amazing effects, again growing from 5% means the potential is 95%. Its a fact that in a net-centric world Windows compatibility is unimportant for many people. In this sense Apple could out-Microsoft Microsoft by selling both hardware and software. 20% is realistic.

The only worry I have is how Apple can manage to scale like this, and I think that's the big challenge ahead of them.

Apple's iPhone: Home Court Advantage

[Long AAPL] The current share price definitely factors in Apple as a player in smart phones. But Apple seems to be able to translate its iPod and iPhone fame directly into Mac sales and that's where they'll double their money, so to say. Macs make up 66% of PC sales over $1000, according to one study. Two thirds. That's mind-boggling.

As for iPhone totally owning all other smart phones: Consider this is the first phone Apple has made. And it's better than anything else. And competitors are _struggling_ to create a competitor that's half as good in terms of usability.

Of course, in the old AAPL days the same thing held true for Macs yet no-one was buying them and no-one cared. But I think Apple has found that the consumer market rewards ease of use and great design infinitely more than the PC market. iPod, iPhone, and dark horse AppleTV are all trying to capitalize on that.

The AppleTV is an irrelevant product at the moment but it, too, has the potential to become a game-changer.

Apple's biggest challenge is how to deal with success. How to design more products at the same quality.

Why is Apple So Disconnected From Its Fundamentals?

I'd recommend cutting that short position ASAP. I am long on AAPL. When it fell to 120, I bought more. Now the sale is over and we go back to court the 200s. It's certainly a feature of AAPL that it can drop 50% overnight with no good reason. But it's really hard to predict when that happens, so the best thing to do is take advantage and do some bargain shopping after the fact. Historically speaking, that is.