Wedge Partners: Apple will sell 100M iPhones in 2011

This week Barron's site published a forecast of Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair, which reveals details on Apple’s suggested progress based on the study of the company's supply chain. He is assured the Cupertino's company will sell 100 million iPhones, which in turn means almost 100% year over year sales growth for the device in 2011. Besides that, the analyst also suggested the number of iPads sold will reach 45-48 million next year.

In comparison to other opinions Blair's forecast is significantly exaggerated. Analyst Yair Reiner from Oppenheimer, for example, predicts that 52 million iPhones and only 23 million iPads will be sold by Apple in 2011 fiscal year. Wall Street expected the iPad will have a higher success in fourth quarter of 2010, and that is the reason why Apple may ship only 18 million iPads in the next year, according to the analyst Charlie Wolf from Needham & Company. He also says the shipments depend on growth in the tablet market so even 18 million can be missed by Apple.

This year Apple has already sold 39.9 million iPhones and 7.4 million iPads, according to Form 10-K.

Bleir is ensured that company continues to gain its popularity and significantly increase income year over year.

“We believe Apple remains the best-positioned company in the tech sector as we exit the year and look into 2011. With the iPhone and the iPad, the company continues to experience tremendous product momentum across two core areas that we believe are still in the early stages of growth: with global handset units at 1.1 billion/year and the tablet opportunity still nascent."

The analyst predicts that the next-gen iPad will be thinner and have a front-facing camera.

Regarding to Macs, Blair noted that this Apple's business will also prosper. He bases this opinion on the demand for the newest 11.6-inch MacBook Air, which reveals to be much higher than expected.

“Apple has created something rather spectacular with the new Air, but has done so in almost a stealthy manner. We believe the 11 inch Air will be both [sic] provide solid incremental units to Apple’s December quarter Mac units, but also add meaningful incremental revenues to the company over the next year.”

A year ago Wedge Partners correctly forecasted the Apple's plans on releasing new iMac and MacBook "in the next several weeks". One of the company's analysts predicted in July 2009 that the iPhone will appear in China before February 2010, and the devices indeed appeared in the country in October 2009.