Needham analyst Charlie Wolf doesn’t seem to know the dangers of using a spreadsheet for what-if analysis. Apple sold 25.5-million iPhones in 2009 and is projected to sell 37.2-million in 2010 (that’s over 100,000 a day). But get this one—Wolf projects 142.5-million iPhones for 2019 (yes, that 2019, 19 years from now):
The final year number assumes the global smart phone market grows from 170.2 million units in 2009 to 569.8 million in 2019, and that Apple’s market share grows from 15% to 25%
What about the iPad, iPod, and Mac? Eric Savitz in Barrons:
(Wolf) sees a steady ramp in iPad sales as well, forecasting unit sales of 2 million this year, 6 million in 2011, and 9 million in 2012, reaching 19.8 million in 2019. Wolf sees Mac ships (sic) growing from 9.5 million units this year to 24.9 million in 2019. On the other hand, he expects iPod sales to fall from 53.2 million this year to 35.5 million in 2019.
Maybe Apple is about to enter a global golden age, but those numbers sound crazy. Can Apple still be Apple with sales approaching $200-billion?