Wow-- two forcasts for $100. I am loving this. If this keeps up, I will come out of grad school with more money than when I went in!

It seems as though the analysts are coming around to my estimates. I've already given an estimate of $100 share price in an earlier thread in response to someone saying that I should have dumped my shares at $75.

I said that it would go to over $80 from the show and the analysts call on the 16th or 18th. As Apple released some figures early, it's started already. Though we need the margins, the profits, and the breakdowns.

So how should someone like myself go about getting shares in Apple? I remember when they were at $20-30 a share. Do you guys use eTrade or something of the likes online?

I didn't wait for the analysts. As soon as I read 14 million ipods sold on one of the sites providing MWSF updates, I called my broker and bought back in. I had made the horrible mistake of selling on hearing of the Intel switch in June. Then iPod sales went up and along with it the stock. This last quarter, iPod sales went absolutely crazy. I feel I have now somewhat rectified my June error.

If just 5% of the iPod purchasers switch from Windows and buy a Mac. Apple's stock will continue to double every year for a while.

www.Sharebuilder.com is a great site if you just want to do one time trading such as buying a stock (Apple) and watching it grow. $4 a trade a deal you can't beat. Great for beginning traders.

www.Scottrade.com is another great site at $7 trade for more serious people. Beats e-trade and Ameritrade for cost wise IMO.

I used to use a broker but I got so tired of their recommendations and pushy sales pitches instead of what I wanted and paying $50 a trade I thought was too high for something I could do just as easily. Check out Sharebuilder, you'd be surprised at how easy it is to buy stock. They offer EFT for transfering funds from your Bank to their account. I have an account with them as well as with Scottrade because I like to do mutual funds and ShareBuilder does not allow you to invest in high risk stocks or MFunds.

sorry about making this sound like a sales pitch, I didn't intend it to sound that way, I just remember when I wanted to get into it and I had no idea how to do it without a broker, but I am sure glad I ditched my broker. My only other sugguestion is, make sure you have a tax person when it comes time to do your taxes.

Just wanted to point out that the iPod division has just surged beyond more than half of Apple revenues this past quarter.

14M iPods at $188 average revenue per iPod equals $2.6B. I think the ARPU has moved up from $188 to about $200 since the 5G is a big seller, 4G nanos are more popular than 2G (whereas before 4G minis were more popular than 6G minis), and shuffle sales have cooled.

Add in other music products (iTMS sales, iPod accessories) revenue of $265M (same amount as previous quarter) and you have $2.865B, which is slightly more than half of $5.7B. But I'm certain other music products have zoomed way over $300M. So it's likely that iPod now accounts for around 55% of revenue, Mac for 45%.

Now, the Mac is still growing, just much slower than iPod. Mac sales of 1.25M units is the best since Christmas 1999. It's only slightly more (1%) than the previous quarter of 1.236M, but around 19% more than Christmas 2004. So it's a little bit better than the y-o-y overall PC sales increase. I think the ARPU has stayed about the same ($1300-$1330 range) since the Mac mini started shipping in quantity.

Also wanted to point out one more thing: Jobs said iTMS music rate is now 3M per day. That's more than double the rate through most of last year (1.2 to 1.5M per day). And it duplicates the doubling in rate right after last year's Christmas break (from around 600K to 1.2M).

Qualifier: Apple seems to have stopped announcing milestones so this doubling effect could've begun anytime after 10/25 (Apple said over 650M songs at that point).

Anyway, assuming no more growth (ha!) or a constant 3M sales per day going forward, Apple should be holding its one billionth iTMS song promotion beginning mid-Feb, with the billionth song due to be sold on Feb 28th (but probably earlier due to the promotion creating more sales).