Mobile

Apple's hit-and-miss report: What analysts are saying (u)

Most see a silver lining, despite disappointing Q4's earnings and troubling Q1 guidance

FORTUNE -- The earnings report Apple (AAPL) issued Thursday evening was complicated one, and analysts on Friday -- like voters in the U.S. Presidential election -- were trying to thread the needle between hope and disappointment.

Excerpts from their notes to clients:

UPDATE: Another wave arrived Friday afternoon. New ones on top.

Sterne Agee's Shaw Wu: Rare EPS Miss But Would MORE

Apple's Q4: Michael Walkley called it; the indies miss again

For the third time in five quarters, the professional analysts outgunned the amateurs

FORTUNE -- It was a great story while it lasted.

For nearly three years the professional sell-side analysts who cover Apple (AAPL) for the big banks and brokerage houses got clobbered every quarter by a motley group of amateurs -- bloggers, day traders and individual investors who bet on Apple to beat the Street's consensus and hadn't been wrong MORE

Apple Q4 earnings beat guidance, miss the Street's lowered expectations

Reports $36 billion in revenue, $8.2 billion profit and $8.67 earnings per share

FORTUNE -- Apple's (AAPL) reported mixed results Thursday. Although its sales of nearly $36 billion beat both its guidance and Wall Street's estimates, its earnings came up slightly short.

At $8.67 per share, they were higher than the company's usual conservative guidance of $7.05. But they were less than the $8.75 Wall Street was expecting -- and that number had MORE

Apple's U.S. iPhone activations grew 98% over the past year

Chances that global iPhone sales topped 27 million last quarter are looking better

FORTUNE -- With Verizon's (VZ) report last week, AT&T (T) on Wednesday and Sprint's (S) this morning, we now have iPhone activation numbers from all three major U.S. carriers.

They are:

AT&T: 4.7 million
Verizon: 3.1 million
Sprint: 1.5 million

Asymco's Horace Dediu has neatly summarized these and all the other U.S. activation numbers dating back to 2007 in the chart at MORE

Analysts cautious ahead of Apple's earnings release

Lowered expectations after Tim Cook's Tuesday bombshell

FORTUNE -- On Monday, Wall Street's consensus for Apple's (AAPL) fourth quarter report -- scheduled to be released today after the markets close -- was for earnings of $8.85 on sales of $36.32 billion.

By Thursday, according to Thomson Financial, those numbers had dropped to $8.75 and $35.8 billion. And among some of the analysts who revised their estimates this week, expectations were even lower.

What MORE

Handicapping Apple's quarterly revenue and earnings: Q4 2012

Revenue estimates range from $34.26 billion to $42.83 billion, EPS from $7.90 to $11.32

NOTE: When Tim Cook announced Tuesday that iPad unit sales hit 100 million about two weeks ago, many analysts revised their numbers downward. Those changes are not reflected in the data that follow. For updated numbers, see Analysts cautious ahead of Apple's earnings.

FORTUNE -- Something interesting happened this quarter when we polled the small army of analysts -- MORE

Patent Office tosses out one of Steve Jobs' favorite inventions

If the decision sticks, one fifth of Samsung's $1.05 billion burden could disappear

FORTUNE -- It was, by several accounts, one of the patents Steve Jobs cared most deeply about.

According to his biographer, it was the clever screen trick that convinced Jobs that Apple (AAPL) could make a successful cellphone.

According to Scott Forstall, it was a deal-breaker in the company's negotiations with Samsung. "I don't remember specifics," the Apple senior vice MORE

Video: Hoopla at the opening of Beijing's new Apple Store

Apple built a huge, three-story retail outlet -- the city's 3rd -- just in time for the iPhone 5

FORTUNE -- Remember what happened in January when the iPhone 4S arrived in Beijing? Would-be customers and rival gangs of scalpers massed by the thousands outside the company's two stores. Demand totally overwhelmed supply and SWAT teams had to be called in to control the rioting when Apple (AAPL) halted sales before MORE

Verizon's activations of older iPhones better than expected

Supply issues seem to have held its iPhone 5 activations to about 650,000 in September

FORTUNE -- Verizon (VZ) announced Thursday that it activated 6.8 million smartphones last quarter -- 3.1 million iPhones and 3.4 million handsets running Google's (GOOG) Android. That compares with 2.7 million iPhones and 2.9 million Androids in Verizon's second quarter.

The company also said that 21% of its iPhone activations were on its LTE network, which suggests MORE

How many iPhones did Apple sell last quarter?

The forecasts range from 21 million to 32.3 million. Median estimate: 27 million.

FORTUNE -- How well Wall Street receives Apple's (AAPL) quarterly earnings these days depends almost entirely on the iPhone.

In a good quarter -- like fiscal Q2 2012, when Apple sold 35 million iPhones -- the device will account for nearly 60% of the company's total revenue. In a bad quarter -- like Q3, when the 26 million units MORE