Apple to release Q3 Financial Report Today amid Grumbling over iPhone Sales Start

Today, Apple will release its financial report for its third fiscal quarter that ended June 30. A conference call with investors to discuss the quarter's performance will be streamed live via QuickTime audio from this Apple Web page.

In it's Q2 report, Apple provided conservative estimates for its Q3 performance.

"Looking ahead to the third fiscal quarter of 2007, we expect revenue of about $5.1 billion and earnings per diluted share of about $.66," said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's CFO.

As we stated on Monday, Apple will almost certainly beat their own estimate, probably by a healthy margin. Apple will probably also beat the analysts' consensus earnings per share estimate of $.72. But it will not be due to the terrific sales of the iPhone which only began during the last two days of Q3.

Earlier this week AT&T released the fact that it had activated 146,000 iPhones from late Friday, June 29, through Saturday, June 30. This news was not taken well by investors who had, for some reason, expected hundreds of thousands of iPhones to be sold so Apple's stock price declined over 10 points. However, Apple actually sold more iPhones than 146,000 because many people had trouble activating their phones over the weekend, mostly those switching carriers and retaining their old phone numbers, and many others bought phones for others or for speculation which also would have gone unactivated through Saturday night. Apple could have easily sold twice the number counted as activated by AT&T.

Hopefully, Apple will shed some light on this in the Q3 financials conference call later today at 2pm PT. Stay tuned for the results. [Bill Fox]

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