June tends to be the cruelest quarter for iPhone sales, as rumors about the next model suppress purchases of the last.
Not this year, according to the 24 Apple analysts—13 pros and 11 amateurs and independents—we’ve heard from so far.
A week before Apple’s Q3 results, the consensus among our panel is that the company sold nearly 50 million iPhones last quarter, up roughly 40% year over year.
That’s how fast unit sales grew in Q2, when iPhone revenue represented 70% of Apple’s total and captured, according to a report issued Monday, 92% of smartphone profits.
Samsung, by contrast had to warn analysts last week its profits were going to fall for the seventh consecutive quarter due to lagging Galaxy S6 sales.
The independent Apple analysts in Coins2Day‘s survey were, as usual, more bullish than the pros. But this quarter both the high estimate (56.3 million) and the low (43.5 million) came from Wall Street professionals.
We’ll find out who was closest to the mark when Apple reports its Q3 earnings after the markets close Tuesday, July 21.
Below: The individual analyst’s estimates — pros in blue, indies in green. Thanks as always to Posts at Eventide’ s Robert Paul Leitao for pulling together the Braeburn Group numbers.
Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter at @philiped. Read his Apple (AAPL) coverage at coins2day.com/ped or subscribe via his RSS feed.