Katy Huberty

Wall Street still doesn't understand Apple

With Q4 earnings due next week, the pros and the bloggers are $3.9 billion apart

It has become, for the Street, an embarrassing quarterly tradition.

The Apple (AAPL) independent analysts -- a growing community of bloggers, private investors and assorted amateurs -- file estimates that look, by Wall Street's standards, outrageously optimistic.

But as the day of reckoning approaches -- in this case, Tuesday Oct. 18, when Apple is scheduled to announce its MORE

Apple's cash is already burning a hole in Wall Street's pockets

The $76 billion Apple reported last quarter could grow to $136 billion by the end of 2012

Apple's (AAPL) fourth fiscal quarter doesn't end until next week, but Morgan Stanley Katy Huberty already has her eye on the company's massive holdings in cash and marketable securities -- $76 billion at the end of Q3, which she estimates will swell to $94 billion by December and $136 billion by the end of MORE

Steve Jobs is still grounded

For the second quarter in a row, reimbursements for his corporate jet were $0.00

We've been keeping an eye on Steve Jobs' private jet expenses ever since Morgan Stanley's Katy Huberty recommended that her clients buy Apple (AAPL) based on how much time he was spending in the air.

The argument she made in Feb. 2008, after Jobs was reimbursed a record $550,000 for jet fuel and other expenses, was that he MORE

Another Apple blowout quarter. Once again, the Street blew it

But an amateur -- a Romanian mathematician teaching in Paris -- nailed the numbers

This story never gets old.

An army of Wall Street analysts, backed by the computing power of some of the world's richest banks and brokerage houses, have once again been out-foxed and out-analyzed by rag-tag bunch of bloggers, amateurs and independent investors.

A glance at the chart at right, which lists the 48 analysts we polled in advance of MORE

Report: Apple is building two (!) iPhones for September release

An analyst expects Apple to launch both an iPhone 5 and a mid-range iPhone 4S

For much of the spring, the reporters who cover Apple (AAPL) have been arguing among themselves about what to call the new iPhone they expect the company to introduce in September.

Some call it the iPhone 5, to match the iOS 5 operating system Apple unveiled to developers three weeks ago.

Some, anticipating that the new device will MORE

Morgan Stanley's 'bull case' for Apple: 65 million iPads, $540 a share

Driven by China, a low-cost iPhone, the expanding tablet market and possibly a smart TV

Morgan Stanley's Katy Huberty, whose Apple (AAPL) forecasts have turned increasingly bullish in the past year (see Morgan Stanley drinks the Apple Kool-Aid), issued a report Friday even more optimistic than the glowing note she published last November.

In her "bull case" scenario, Apple ships 87 million iPhones and 65 million iPads in calendar 2011, driving MORE

China's love affair with Apple

What is it with the Chinese and their iPhones?

The signs were everywhere: The steady stream of human traffic from New York's Chinatown to the Fifth Avenue Apple Store. The housewives arrested at the Hong Kong crossing with dozens of units strapped under their dresses. The scalper fights that broke out when Apple's Beijing store briefly lifted its two-iPhones-per-customer limit.

No wonder Apple (AAPL) decided several years ago to make China MORE

Morgan Stanley's 'bull case' for Apple: 80 million iPhones, $500 per share

Analyst sees China's growing middle class as the underappreciated driver of future growth.

Morgan Stanley's Katy Huberty, whose Apple (AAPL) forecasts have turned increasingly bullish in the past year (see Morgan Stanley drinks the Apple Kool-Aid), has issued her most optimistic report to date.

In her "bull case" scenario, Apple ships 80 million iPhones and 40 million iPads in calendar 2011, driving its stock to $500 a share by next August.

Apple closed MORE

Steve Jobs is back in the air

Reimbursements for business use of his Gulfstream jet climbed to $93,000 in Q4

We've been keeping an eye on Steve Jobs' private jet expenses ever since Morgan Stanley's Katy Huberty recommended that her clients buy Apple (AAPL) based on how much time Steve Jobs was spending in the air.

The argument she made in Feb. 2008, after Jobs was reimbursed a record $550,000 for jet fuel and other expenses, was that he MORE

Apple floats through the channel

The company stands out in a Morgan Stanley survey of the PC distribution channel

It's not hard to spot the outlier in the chart above, taken from Morgan Stanley's quarterly survey, released Thursday, of the PC distribution channel -- the chain of intermediary companies whose job it is to carry finished product from the manufacturer to the customer.

As far as the distributors and retailers are concerned, there's Apple (AAPL), which is MORE