Analyst: iPhone 4S Sales Growing, Outselling Competition

Apple’s iPhone 4S are still on the rise and going strong, according to Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley’s research. He sees the iPhone 4S outselling the combined competition from the Android-based phones sold through U.S. cell service providers.

iPhone sales: Still going strong

“Our March checks indicated the iPhone continues to extend its market share gains,” Mr. Walkley said. “In fact, we believe iPhones are outselling all other smartphones combined at Sprint and AT&T and selling at roughly equal volume to all Android smartphones at Verizon.”

He added that iPhone sales in Western Europe are staying strong, and the combo smartphone and iPod is gaining share in emerging markets. The only other smartphone maker Mr. Walkley sees holding a sizable share of market is Samsung.

According to Mr. Walkely’s analysis,

With strong iPhone sales and industry-leading ASPs, Apple generated a remarkable 80 percent share of estimated Q4/C2011 handset industry operating profits among the top eight OEMs with only 8.1 percent global handset market share. With our checks also indicating strong share gains for Samsung during the March quarter, we estimate Apple and Samsung could improve sequentially on their amazing 95 percent share of handset industry profits during Q4/C2012.

He also expects Apple will refresh the iPhone like this fall with LTE wireless data support. Apple introduced fast LTE support to its iOS devices with the launch of the third generation iPad a few weeks ago.

Along with new iPhones, Mr. Walkley expects Apple is ramping up for new MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models, and may still introduce its own television before the end of the year.

Mr. Walkley is maintaining his “Buy” rating and US$710 target price for Apple’s stock. Apple is currently trading at $609.80, up 10.25 (1.71%).