Needham & Co. expect Apple will sell nearly 30 million iPhones next year, driving Mac sales even higher.
Analyst Charles Wolf released a note to clients yesterday, noting the new $199 price of the iPhone, he anticipated higher sales of the device and raised his stock target on Apple to $240 per share to reflect his optimism, 9 to 5 Mac reports.
Wolf also expects the installed base of iPhone users to reach 150 million in the next ten years. In 2009, he expects 14 million units to sell in the US and 15.6 million sales internationally for a combined target of 29.6 million.
Further, he anticipates iPhone sales will reach 63 million in 2017.
However, strong iPhone sales will have consequences on Apple's iPod line, the analyst predicts sales of these will shrink by "about 30 per cent" in the medium term.
But the real positive impact is in Apple's far more profitable Mac sales, where Wolf writes: "The addition of the iPhone halo effect increases the number of Macs sold in 2017 from 40 million units in the previous forecast to 44 million units in the updated one," he wrote in his report.
Apple will also likely see profits from its App Store. Noting that the PC industry was itself kick-started into what it is today on the introduction of good software, he speculates Apple's move to open the iPhone up to third party developers will drive the same disruptive wave of innovation in the smartphone business.
"The emergence of the first viable software platform in the (smartphone) industry could drive iPhone sales above the levels we modeled in this report," he said.
iPhone: Singapore, India, Philippines and Australia
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