Sizzling July sales numbers for Apple’s iPhone and a fever pitch of excitement over the first major revamp of the iPod in two years sent Apple shares surging more than 4 percent yesterday.
Shares in the Cupertino, Calif.-based company rose $5.68 to close at $144.16 ahead of today’s “special event” in San Francisco, at which Jobs is expected to announce a new lineup of new portable music and video players.
Powering Apple stock was a report from research firm iSuppli Corp. that the iPhone outsold all smart phones in the U.S. during July, accounting for 1.8 percent of all mobile-handset unit sales to U.S. consumers.
iPhone sales outpaced all smart phones from BlackBerry maker Research in Motion, Palm, Motorola, Nokia, and Samsung, and equaled sales of LG’s feature-rich music phone, the Chocolate, iSuppli said.
The firm called the pace of adoption for the iPhone “likely. . . unprecedented in the history of the mobile-handset market” and reiterated its forecast that Apple will ship 4.5 million iPhones worldwide in 2007, and more than 30 million units by 2011.
Published reports from Apple and AT&T watchers are calling for in excess of 800,000 units sold by October.
In the near term, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster anticipates that Apple’s recently launched new lineup of Mac computers and the pending updates on the iPod will help the company deliver its best results ever over the next two quarters. Yesterday he raised his 52-week price target on the company to $211 up from $205. brian.garrity@nypost.com