AAPL) Rises as Third Quarter Earnings Near — Apple (NASDAQ

By almost any account, Apple had a stellar quarter, reporting revenue of $49.6 billion (a 33 percent increase year-over-year) and net profit of $10.7 billion ( (.85 per diluted share).

Trip Chowdhry, Global Equities Research managing director, estimates that the company could sell around 20-25 million watches in the last three months of the year.

One of the biggest questions about Tim Cook’s leadership has been how well his first new product will please Apple’s customers. That will change this fall when a software update will allow developers to program to the watch directly. Meanwhile, a mere 1 percent of the Apple Watch owners surveyed said they were dissatisfied with their wearable device.

The company revealed it sold 47.5 million iPhones, 10.9 million iPads and 4.7 million Macs during the period, but still no mention of Apple Watch sales.

At an common selling rate of far more than $600, just before carrier subsidies, Apple’s phones are extra costly than a lot of competing Android versions, but they also present additional gain.

We might not know how many Apple Watches have been sold but we do know that those who have bought one – love it. He estimates other providers operated their smartphone company at a loss or broke even.

Apple will host a conference call with analysts at 5 pm, Eastern time, this evening, and you can catch a webcast of it on the company’s investor relations site. But Samsung has said it expects a drop in profit for the April-June quarter, apparently because sales of its new Galaxy S6 models fell short of expectations. In April, Apple forecast quarterly revenue between $46 billion and $48 billion. Apple now makes a phablet-sized iPhone 6 Plus, the iPhone 6 and a smaller iPhone 5S – it’s unclear whether the latter form factor will be a part of the new line-up. On the other hand, the demand for the Apple Watch isn’t clear enough. Likewise, KGI’s report noted a decline on iPad sales by around 30 percent. And nearly 90% said they felt the Apple Watch was worth, or more than worth its cost, which starts at $350.

In the past landmark product launches have been followed by the releasing of positive sales figures, but no official data has been released regarding sales of ‘the watch.’.

But Apple hasn’t officially released any sales figures on the Apple Watch, and is instead lumping it into the “other” category of earnings.