Apple (AAPL) iPhone Sales May Double, As Mac Cruises

Apple’s (AAPL) stock price may just keep going up. New evidence indicates that, while iPod sales growth is slowing, Mac and iPhone sales could more than make up for that difference.

One brokerage counted heads and found that global iPhone sales could double next year. According to Reuters, "Morgan Stanley expects 27 million iPhones to be sold in calendar year 2009 with an average revenue of $550 per unit". Because Apple is allowing carriers to underwrite the cost of the phone for subscribers and with the new 3G versions of the handset coming to market, the analysis has the benefit of being believable.

Over at Lehman, research experts report that Mac sales were probably up 50% in May. That means Apple is getting its machines off the shelf at a better rate than HP (HPQ) or Dell (DELL).

Most of this adds up to a fiscal year, starting in October, in which Apple could once again defy all of the market’s logic about consumer electronics and PC penetration. It also breaks the business rule of thump that a company cannot have hit after hit without a number of failures in between.

If Apple reaches $300 a share toward the end of the year, who would be surprised?

Douglas A. McIntyre