Piper Jaffray's Observations From Their 25 Hours in Apple (AAPL) Stores

August 13, 2008 8:10 AM EDT

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, along with Piper analysts Michael J. Olson and Andrew H. Murphy, spent 25 hours counting iPhone sales in Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) retail stores throughout the country.

After the 25 hours, the analysts believe Apple iPhone sales will be at least 4.47m iPhones in the quarter, compared to 1.12m last year. Previously, they estimated that Apple would sell 4.1m iPhones for the September quarter.

The analysts estimate that Apple sells an average of 95 iPhone 3Gs per day at each of its 188 U.S. retail stores. This is up from 21 phones per day a year ago.

However, the analysts said, "While we believe demand remains high, we anticipate sales will decrease as the quarter progresses. We are reducing our estimates for remaining 51 days in Q4 to 31 phones per day, as we saw roughly a 10% decrease from our first week of survey work to the second. We believe that our revision may be conservative and that Apple will meet our estimates. The August 22nd launch in additional countries should provide another catalyst to sales." The announcement that Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) will start selling the iPhone on September 7, should also be a positive for iPhone sales, in their opinion.

Munster maintains his Buy rating and $250 price target on Apple.

Apple Inc. designs, manufactures, and sells personal computers, portable digital music players, and mobile communication devices, as well as related software, services, peripherals, and networking solutions worldwide.

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• Piper Jaffray
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