Needham analyst Charlie Wolf told investors in a note — as reported by “Fortune” (http://macte.ch/nG5xM) — has raised his iPad shipment numbers for this year and next by 10 million units, from 20 million to 30 million units in 2011 and from 30 million to 40 million units in 2012.
“Our expectation going into the March 11th launch of the iPad 2 in the U.S. was that it would be successful, but probably more subdued than the launch of the original iPad a year ago,” he wrote. “The launch blew out our expectations.
Meanwhile, Asymco (http://www.asymco.com)analyst Horace Dediu predicted that Apple’s current-generation iPhone 4 smartphone handset will likely sell around 60-65 million units in total. Sales of its future successor, the iPhone 5, could nearly double that amount, he said.
Dediu based his predictions on Apple’s historical iPhone sales figures, iPhone production ramps and market growth patterns. Through the first four generations of the iPhone, he said, each new version of the groundbreaking device sells roughly twice as many units as the last.