I'm projecting 17.5M iPods - I think the iPod-as-a-music-player acceleration peaked last Xmas. 1Q04 had 118% qoq unit growth, 1Q05 had 127%, 1Q06 had 118%, so I'm projecting just 100% (Q3's 8.7M doubled). When the real "iPod video" or an "iPod phone" is released, then I can see growth bursting out again.
I'm going with $160 ASP, due to high percentage of shuffle sales.
As for Macs, I'm at 1.93M, with 670K desktops and 1260K portables due to refreshed MacBooks. My ASP is a bit lower at $1350 due to same refreshed MacBooks, and no growth in Mac Pro sales from last quarter's release of pent-up demand. (If rumored Mac Pro 8-core boost occurs in next 2 weeks, I will change this a bit.)
I project 1.24M in other revenue due to increased iTunes card sales (big 80%+ 1Q qoq jumps in other music in last 2 years; I'm only projecting 33% qoq) and increased AppleCare sales due to increased unit sales.
So overall, I project $6.65B in revenue and $750M in net income (28% gross margin), without any expenses for the options mess. But of course, I'm hoping Apple will just blow me away again.
Wow! Impressive. I'm trying to avoid being sandbagged again. No matter how aggressive my numbers, I'm always about $0.10 a share short of the actual number. Last year at this time I projected 9 million iPods; they shipped 14 million. That has to tell you something.
As I noted in the article, I think many are over-discounting how much the price changes and the retail channel will help this year (i.e., marketing factors). Those can have big effects on demand and volume. And I tend to agree with whoever noted that music players are far from a saturated market -- even at 80 million shipped worldwide, that's a tiny fraction of the adult first world income. There's still a lot of opportunity for growth.
Thanks for sharing your analysis, and I hope you'll share other insights as they come to you!
Best,
Carl
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This is anecdotal. I see a lot of my friends, family and coworkers buying or upgrading to the new nano. In some cases, it is people who already have an iPod video.
The reason: Nike integration.
Realize the a lot of people want to look their best for the holiday parties. You should see a significant surge in Nike and Apple sales in January as people try to lose the extra pounds that they put on during the season.
Time to long Nike?
What's amazing is that Apple didn't even make that much in a year not so many years ago. I hope you bought Apple stock a while back! 
IMHO the introduction of the chic new shuffle and the multicolor iPod, both aluminum cased, will also be a factor in big Q4 sales numbers.
Congratulations for combining sound logic whith known facts but, most of all, for daring to talk about your conclusions.
I wonder why big name so called analysts just can't be able to do the same.
Commenting by HaloScan
