Verizon

Apple blowout: Sales of $39.2 billion on 35 million iPhones

Having fallen nearly 13% since April 10, the stock popped 7.44% on the news

FORTUNE -- After losing more than $70 billion in market value in two weeks, Apple (AAPL) capped one of the strangest earnings walkups in memory by handily beating all but the most optimistic estimates, reporting record March quarter earnings of $12.30 per share on sales of $39.2 billion.

Shares reversed course as soon as the news broke, climbing more MORE

All eyes on the iPhone sales

Why is the market so freaked by the activation numbers from Verizon and AT&T?

FORTUNE -- Just when it was supposed to start its pre-earnings rebound, Apple (AAPL) headed south again, opened down $8.79 (1.5%) Tuesday morning in reaction -- according to the talking heads on CNBC -- to the news that AT&T (T) activated only 4.3 million iPhones last quarter, down from 7.6 millon in the Christmas quarter.

On top of MORE

About those 3.2 million Verizon iPhone activations last quarter

Some saw it as bad news. Some saw it as good. Both missed the point.

There were two schools of commentary on Verizon's (VZ) report last week that it activated 3.2 million iPhones last quarter, down from 4.2 million in the Christmas quarter.

"Verizon Q1 Adds: Tablets Up, But iPhones Down" was the headline on Investors' Business Daily, as if the 1 million unit shortfall was bad news for Apple (AAPL).

MacRumors' headline, "iPhone MORE

Which is the fastest iPhone carrier in your neighborhood?

A new app makes it easy (and fun!) to compare download speeds, but can it be trusted?

According to the snapshot at right, AT&T's (T) cellular service in Park Slope Brooklyn is nearly 5 times faster than Verizon's (VZ) and more than 7 times faster than Sprint's (S).

At least that's the reading I get on my iPhone from my favorite armchair on a new app called CarrierCompare from SwayMarkets.

On my iPad running MORE

'You come for the product, you stay for the ecosystem'

The latest comScore data suggest that half of iPhone buyers are repeat customers

Here's a lesson from Asymco's Horace Dediu in how to add color and value to raw data.

First he did what comScore should have done when it released its February U.S. mobile phone market report: He graphed the data, showing not only comScore's latest numbers, but the trend lines dating back two years. (See chart at right.)

Then he correlated MORE

24% of Americans surveyed plan to buy the new iPad

29% of international respondents hoped to buy it within 3 months

One of the first things they teach you in Statistics 101 is that the size of your sample doesn't matter as much as how representative it is.

In that regard, it's probably a good thing that Baird's William Power acknowledges high up in the note he issued to clients Monday that the online survey of 488 potential customers Baird Equity Research MORE

The iPhone is (still) saving the mobile industry

Apple's iPhone almost singlehandedly saved AT&T and Sprint. But it come at a steep price, one that the mobile carriers will be paying for years.

By Kevin Kelleher, contributor

FORTUNE – The iPhone has been, by many measures, one of the most successful products in business history. Nearly 200 million iPhones have been sold in four and a half years, 37 million of them in the last three months of 2011. Apple's MORE

Today in Tech: Did the Kindle Fire sell better than expected?

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"Piracy may not be a bad thing: it can get us more business at the end of the day."
-- Mikael Hed, CEO of Angry Birds-maker Rovio Mobile (The Guardian)

* Stifel Nicolaus analyst Jordan Rohan raised his estimates for sales of the Kindle Fire during the fourth quarter from five MORE

Wall Street's low-ball iPhone estimates bump into reality

Reports from Verizon and AT&T suggest they could be off by as much as 45%

UBS' Maynard Um has built a spreadsheet for Apple (AAPL) in which he assumes the company sold 30 million last quarter -- some 800,000 unit higher than the 29.2 million average of 20 Wall Street analysts we polled over the weekend.

But when he totes up the sales numbers coming in from Apple's U.S. carriers, his 30 million estimate MORE

Apple 2.0's ten most-read stories of 2011

A stock-market anomaly, a new iPhone, a second iPad, two new wireless carriers, a swarm of lawsuits and a malware false alarm

Out of the 793 items about Apple (AAPL) filed in this space over the past 12 months, these were the 10 that -- for good or ill -- interested the most readers:

Snapshot of an Apple flash crash: What triggered the sell-off that knocked $10 billion off the company's market cap? (Feb. MORE