Given Sprint’s size – with 56 million total connections it’s about half the size of either Verizon or AT&T – 1.5 million iPhones certainly isn’t a bad haul, but it certainly doesn’t indicate customers are flocking to the carrier lured by cheap data. Part of the problem is that the pickings were already slim when Sprint first started selling the device in October. AT&T and Verizon had already locked a good deal of customers into contracts, and AT&T in particular has been aggressively upgrading its older iPhone customers to the new 4S and to new 2-year contracts.

Though the iPhone may not be a runaway success for Sprint, it’s managed to use the device both to keep its current subscribers happy as well as bring in new customers. Sprint said 44 percent of its first quarter activations were new accounts, so it’s not merely recycling its old customer base, swapping out Android phones for iPhones. And even if AT&T and Verizon are far outpacing it in iPhone activations, Sprint is quickly becoming a significant part of Apple’s smartphone empire, accounting for 4 percent of Apple’s global 35.1 million global iPhone sales last quarter.

The iPhone also contributed to Sprint’s more than 1 million net subscriber additions. Most of those customers came from its wholesale business – connections it sells to mobile virtual network operators and Sprint’s regional affiliates – and its numerous prepaid brands, but Sprint managed to grow its core CDMA contract subscriber base by 263,000, which offset a loss 455,000 Nextel iDEN customers.

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Here’s what Apple predicted for its overall results for the January through March period back in late January:

“Looking ahead to the second fiscal quarter of 2012, which will span 13 weeks, we expect revenue of about $32.5 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $8.50.”

Wall Street investors, naturally, are expecting a bit more from the company that always lowballs its forecasts: They are anticipating revenue to be around $36.64 billion for earnings of $9.99 per share.

So how will Apple match — or surpass — that forecast?

The second fiscal quarter had one big new product release: the new iPad. Its sales are likely to be a highlight and provide Apple with a nice boost. While the company sold 4.69 million iPads during the same quarter a year ago, this year the new iPad sold more than half of that total in its very first weekend, with 3 million. Apple also dropped the older model iPad 2 by $100 so it starts at $399. So, expect iPad sales to be a fairly large number: the average estimate from Wall Street analysts is just under 12 million units.

Mac sales have been up for dozens of quarters in a row, but it’s also getting to that time of year where Apple should be refreshing its MacBook and iMac lineup. However, that didn’t happen during the quarter, so it won’t be a huge surprise if unit sales don’t match last quarter’s record-high 5.2 million with potential buyers (sensibly) waiting to upgrade. The quarter in question is also typically a low point in the year for the PC industry in general — it’s after the holidays and still months before graduation and back-to-school shopping. A year ago, 3.76 million Macs were sold. On Tuesday, analysts are expecting a little over 4.5 million sales to be announced.

But again, the key metric influencing Apple’s earnings these days comes down to the iPhone. Sales of the device are what have propelled Apple’s success in the last five years to the top of the tech and business worlds. It’s also what can lead to a major Wall Street freakout: When Apple didn’t meet analysts’ expectations in August thanks to a delayed upgrade cycle of iPhones, there were predictions of the company’s imminent doom. When Apple announced at the end of last quarter that it sold an astonishing 37 million iPhones following the 4S debut in the fall, its stock went on a tear, rising 44.7 percent in just over two months.

So should we be prepared for investors’ handwringing or high-fiving? More likely the latter. Estimates of how many new iPhones Apple sold vary widely, as one might expect. Cannacord Genuity says 32.6 million; JP Morgan is looking for 31.1 million units; Fortune polled 48 analysts that follow Apple and the average estimate was 30.5 million, though the low estimate was 26 million and the highest 33 million.

There was some degree of concern last week after Verizon announced it had activated 3.2 million iPhones, or 26 percent fewer during the last quarter than it did the same quarter a year ago. But, to be fair, was the first quarter that Apple freed the iPhone from AT&T’s exclusivity in the U.S., so there was a bit of pent-up demand back then. And Verizon still sold more iPhones than all of its Android phones combined during that quarter.

Either way, compared to Apple’s iPhone sales the same quarter a year ago (18.65 million) it’s extremely likely this past quarter’s growth is going to be above 50 percent.

Though other new phones that launched during the quarter have had some buzz, like Nokia’s Windows Phone-powered Lumia phones, Nokia has already said sales of the heavily anticipated phones were “mixed.” Samsung, on the other hand, is continuing to charge ahead as Apple’s most significant competitor in smartphone sales. It says it expects to report a record quarter for the same period, and analysts are estimating the Korean electronics maker may have shipped 44 million smartphones between January and March.

We’ll be covering the earnings call at 2 p.m. PT Tuesday, so be sure to come back here then.

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The call is set for 2 p.m. PST on Jan. 24.

Specifically, Cook stated in October, “I’m confident that we will set an all-time record for iPhone this quarter.” Oppenheimer put a bold forecast out there to match: He said Apple would hit $37 billion in revenue for the holiday quarter — up 38 percent from the $26.74 billion of the same quarter last year — and earnings per share of $9.30, up from $6.43.

Those numbers are not at all out of the realm of possibility, thanks to the events of the quarter: It began with the iPhone 4S going on sale, saw the mobbed opening of a new flagship retail store, and ended with the all-important Christmas shopping and gift-giving period that has historically been good for the iPhone/iPod/iPad business units.

Analysts are expecting Cook’s promise of an all-time high for iPhone sales to hold true. There are estimations of up to 30 million iPhones sold, which is 10 million more phones than Apple’s previous quarterly record. There is reason to feel confident in that too: In just the first weekend in October that the iPhone 4S went on sale, Apple sold 4 million of them. And by early December, iPhone carrier AT&T was already saying it was on the cusp of breaking its own record for quarterly iPhone sales with 6 million, with several weeks in the quarter to go.

IPads won’t be too shabby either. Analysts are expecting between 13 and 14 million iPads sold, which would easily beat the previous quarter’s record of 11.2 million.

We will be covering the announcements here on Jan. 24, so be sure to join us. Besides just talk of records broken, expect discussion around China (Apple’s second-most-important market), enterprise use of the iPhone and iPad, and investors’ favorite topic: the long-sought dividend.

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The 2 million Verizon iPhones sold actually represents a dip in iPhone activations compared to the previous quarter, but they weren’t alone: AT&T and Apple itself also saw sales of the smartphone drop off as customers were reportedly anticipating the iPhone 4S, which went on sale last week. Last quarter, AT&T sold 3.6 million iPhones compared to Verizon’s 2.3 million, both higher than this quarter’s tallies. But Verizon is closing the gap: Last quarter they trailed Verizon’s iPhone sales by 1.3 million; this quarter they trailed by a mere 700,000. And it should be pointed out that AT&T’s numbers include iPhone 3GS sales as well, which incidentally, are selling really well.

Verizon has been selling the iPhone since February, and while it appears Apple’s smartphone has been a decent tool for acquiring new customers, it has been more effective as a way to upsell its existing customers. Verizon revealed Friday that during the quarter, 20 percent of iPhone customers came to them from a different carrier, and the remaining 80 percent were already Verizon subscribers, according to a Bloomberg report.

Overall, the iPhone continues to help Verizon’s bottom line, but it’s not the sole reason the carrier doubled its overall earnings during the quarter to $1.38 million, from the $659 million it reported a year earlier, when it was iPhone-less. On Friday, it said it sold 5.6 million smartphones during the quarter, half of which were Android phones.

Although it said it “sold out” of iPhone 4S units on the first day it was available, Verizon didn’t offer any further insight into how many of the devices it has sold so far. AT&T said it has activated “more than 1 million” iPhone 4S devices already.

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Apple Store in Shanghai

China isn’t just where Apple manufactures products. It’s now the country that delivers the most revenue for the company after the U.S. Over the last year, Apple and its executives have emphasized China and its surrounding areas as an important part of its sales strategy. But Tuesday during Apple’s fiscal fourth-quarter 2011 earnings call, CEO Tim Cook shed more light on just how important China has become.

Calling the progress in China “amazing,” Cook said that if you count the greater China region as a whole (which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan) it now accounts for 12 percent of Apple’s full-year revenue for 2011. That’s up from just 2 percent in fiscal year 2009, he said. That makes it Apple’s “fastest-growing region by far.”

For the fourth quarter of 2011, China contributed $4.5 billion, or 16 percent of the $28.7 billion in total revenue the company reported. It’s even more astounding when you compared that to Europe, which contributed $7.4 billion to Apple’s bottom line — that means China and its surrounding areas are accounting for a little over half of what Europe is.

Cook also reiterated the stats on its retail stores in area that he presented at the iPhone 4S event two weeks ago. There are now six Apple Stores in greater China (compared to 64 in Europe), and the Hong Kong location, which opened last month, saw more visitors on opening day than any other Apple Store. All the greater China locations are the company’s most-visited and highest-grossing retail stores, and there will be more China stores to come.

Cook made it clear Apple is going to ride the momentum in China as far as it can:

“In my lifetime I’ve never seen a country with as many people rising into the middle class aspiring to buy products that Apple makes. It’s an area of enormous opportunity. It has quickly become No. 2 on our lists of top revenue countries very, very quickly.”

Image courtesy of Flickr user adactio

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Here’s why that number concerns them and why it’s likely just a minor blip:

• Apple says that this was a “record” September quarter for them. You would think that would mean record iPhone sales too. Sure, 17.1 million is a lot, but it’s still fewer than the 20.1 million iPhones Apple sold in the previous quarter, and perhaps more importantly to those keeping score on Wall Street, below the 18-21 million smartphones Samsung is believed to have sold last quarter. Samsung is Apple’s chief competitor, in many ways, and any sign of a slip is going to resonate with the investors who are closely watching Apple and its competition.
• Apple, not surprisingly, said they saw this dip in iPhone sales coming. On the earnings call, CEO Tim Cook, looking on the bright side, said people were holding out for the iPhone 4S:

[It was] much less of a reduction than what we were expecting and that was a large factor in our revenue exceeding our guidance…We knew that there was great anticipation of a June or July new iPhone because that was the pace we had been on for the last several years. As we predicted, that sell-through decline did occur, but not really to the extent that we thought. So we significantly beat our guidance.

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Here’s a quick breakdown of the devices the company sold between July and the end of September of this year.

iPhones sold: 17.07 million. Note: The fourth quarter ended on September 30 for Apple, so this total doesn’t include those monster iPhone 4S numbers Apple reported on Monday.

iPads sold: 11.12 million

Macs sold: 4.89 million

iPods sold: 6.62 million

There will be a conference call with Apple analysts at 2 pm PT, so check back for further analysis later today.

Update: Wall Street did not react kindly at all to Apple’s revenue not meeting their expectations. Apple stock has dropped 5.6 percent or $23.73 in after-hours trading as of 2 pm PT.

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The stock price of the iPhone and iPad maker hit $400 a few times Monday, but closed at $398.50. Today shares opened at $400 and peaked earlier this morning at $404.48.

There’s no mystery where the boost is coming from. Apple’s stock value has been swinging steadily upward since the introduction of the original iPad in late January 2010. Since then, Apple shares have grown 96 percent. Most recently, Apple reported blow-out third-quarter 2011 earnings last week, on the back of sales of more than 20 million iPhones and 9 million iPads in just three months.

Apple’s market capitalization is the number that Wall Street has been eyeing perhaps even more closely. As of Tuesday, Apple is worth $374.18 billion, making it the second-most valuable company in the world after ExxonMobil. While Apple is close, Exxon still has a pretty sizable lead, closing today with a valuation of $415.52.

But there’s at least one good reason to believe Apple’s value for shareholders isn’t going to lose steam anytime soon: Still expected sometime later this year is the next iteration of the iPhone.

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When Apple released its third-quarter 2011 earnings results on Tuesday,  the numbers were, as is becoming almost customary for the Cupertino crew lately, a huge blow-out. Success was spread over many parts of the business, particularly the company’s flagship products, the iPhone and the Mac. Both are growing and show that Apple is on a tear with the entirety of its business. But those iPad results? Those were fairly stunning.

While Android phones are outpacing the iPhone in market share, it’s clear that Apple is not anywhere close to giving up its lead in the tablet race. And despite the seemingly endless train of new tablets popping up, Apple is putting more space between its tablet and the rest of the field.

Here are the most important numbers from Apple’s earnings that show that the iPad is seemingly unstoppable, and clearly Apple’s most important product.

$6 billion. That’s how much money Apple made from the iPad just in April, May and June of this year. The key is that Apple now makes more money off the iPad, a product slightly more than one year old, than its Mac lineup. Apple pulled in just under $5 billion in revenue from Mac desktops and notebooks during the same quarter.

The people scooping up iPads are not just gadget hounds and consumers with expendable income. Buyers include large corporations who are handing them out to employees to help them do their job, something Apple has been actively pushing for a while. But Apple is also getting a boost in iPad sales even from sources the company didn’t anticipate.

“We sold more iPads to K–12 [schools] than we did Macs, which is absolutely shocking,” said Apple COO Tim Cook on a conference call with analysts on Tuesday. “We never would have predicted that.”

Shocking, perhaps. But probably not unwelcome. Apple very likely doesn’t mind getting kids used to working on iPads in elementary school.

9.25 million. That’s how many iPads Apple sold during the quarter. That blows away what Apple sold a year ago, just 3.3 million iPads, and is a 183 percent bump. So what’s changed in the past quarter? Apple’s obviously had more than a year to advertise the product and build a customer base. But an important step is that Apple’s gotten its iPad supply-chain act together. If you’ll recall the situation a year ago, the original iPad was extremely hard to find. Last year Apple didn’t catch up on the seemingly insatiable demand for the original iPad until later in the summer.

Apple admitted earlier this year that it couldn’t make iPad 2s fast enough to keep up with demand. Now Apple is still selling “every iPad 2 it makes,” but it also said it was able to make more iPads 2s during the most recent quarter than it did in the same period a year ago. So while demand is still ahead of supply (“Sales of the iPad 2 have been absolutely a frenzy,” said Cook), they’re getting closer to meeting it. Cook went as far as to say that in some markets they had actually caught up and were able to be in some sort of an equilibrium with demand and supply. He did not, however, expand on which markets.

14 percent. That’s actually not an iPad number. That’s how much Mac sales grew during this most recent quarter compared to the same quarter a year ago. While iPads are outgrowing Macs, they’re doing it without significantly affecting the Mac business.

Sure, Cook allowed, “we do believe that some customers chose to purchase an iPad instead of a new Mac during the quarter. But we also believe that even more customers purchased an iPad over a Windows PC. There’s a lot more of the PC business to cannibalize over the Mac.”

Apple has been banging the “post-PC” drum pretty hard since it introduced the iPad, and at least some of its tablet competitors are selling the tablet as a PC in a different form factor. Surging iPad sales in addition to steadily growing Mac sales could mean that Apple customers are buying into Apple’s view of the computing world, too.

222 million. That’s the total number of iOS-based devices that are floating around in people’s pockets, purses and briefcases: iPhones, iPads and iPod touches. That’s compared with 130 million Android devices that Google recently announced. While the iPhone has a three-year head start on the iPad, it’s clear that Apple’s tablet is pushing those numbers up.

$2.5 billion. That’s the money Apple paid back to developers whose apps sold through its store so far. That, along with the previous iOS device tally, are meant to be siren calls for developers.

The number of iOS devices represents the continued viability of the iPhone as a platform for selling apps and the growth of the iPad. These are numbers Apple likes to remind app makers of regularly. It’s a strategy to remind those who are or might be attracted to the growing number of Android gadgets floating around that not only is iOS continuing to grow, it’s also good for business.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user William Hook

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• Revenue of $28.57 billion vs $15.70 billion (Q3 2010)
• Net profit of $7.31 billion vs $3.25 billion (Q3 2010)
• Earnings per share of $7.79 per diluted share vs $3.51 per diluted share
• Gross margin was 41.7 % vs 39.1% (Q3 2010)

“We’re thrilled to deliver our best quarter ever, with revenue up 82 percent and profits up 125 percent,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Right now, we’re very focused and excited about bringing iOS 5 and iCloud to our users this fall.”

• Sold 20.34 million iPhones up 142% in unit terms over the year-ago quarter.
• Sold 9.25 million iPads during the quarter, a 183% unit increase over the year-ago quarter.
• Sold 3.95 million Macs during the quarter, a 14% unit increase over the year-ago quarter.
• Sold 7.54 million iPods, a 20% unit decline from the year-ago quarter.

“Looking ahead to the fourth fiscal quarter of 2011, we expect revenue of about $25 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $5.50.” Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO.

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