Apple's Stock Will Rise in 2010: Poll
(Apple stock price poll results updated with estimates of Apple iPad sales during its first day of sales, as well as Monday morning Apple share prices.)
NEW YORK (
) --
Apple's
(AAPL) - Get Report
stock will continue to rise throughout the year, according to
TheStreet
users.
Shares of Apple are expected to end 2010 between $240 and $280, according to 46% of voters in our weekly poll.
Another 34% believe Apple stock could go even higher, surpassing $280 by the year's end, while 15% say it will remain stable between $200 and $240.
They Just Don't Get Apple!
Combined, that equates, of course, to 80% of respondents in our survey who believe that Apple stock will finish the year significantly higher than its current bid price.
Apple's stock hit five records this week, reaching $227.73 a share at its highest point. The company ended the week up 3.5% to $226.60. Shares in Apple are down 22 cents in pre-market trading Monday morning.
The Apple share boost followed last Friday's announcement that the iPad will be available in stores on April 3. This is Apple's first new device in three years.
Apple opened its online stores for iPad pre-orders on Friday. The company revealed its first commercial for the device during the Academy Awards last Sunday.
By Monday, estimates of the first day of iPad sales were already being circulated. Investor Village's Apple Sanity Board released results of an unofficial tally of iPad sales form Friday, which indicated that roughly 120,000 iPads were sold during the day.
Their tallying method was somewhat crude -- but not without logic: Investor Village began by taking the total number of Apple Inc. product orders Friday, which was 124,596. They subtracted from that the 16,500 orders that are normally placed in an average day, then mulitplied those 108,096 by 1.11 -- the average number of iPads ordered per customer -- to arrive at 119,987 iPads ordered.
But the iPad device wasn't the only news driving shares of Apple higher last week. On Thursday rumors surfaced on the blog
AppleInsider
that the iPhone will allow multitasking, or the simultaneous operation of multiple applications like messaging, music and Web browser. Currently the iPhone only allows one application to run at a time.
The news also helped to confirm that a new Apple iPhone is, in fact, in the works.
There are some readers, albeit a very small number, who anticipate a selloff in Apple stock. About 3.5% said that stock will trade in the range of $160 to $200 by the end of the year, and 1.5% think Apple will drop below $160.
There are those who advise buying Apple ahead of the iPad launch, and that once the device hits stores the stock will pull back. Jim Cramer, for one, notes that we know how to trade Apple from the launch of the iPhone. The best time to buy, Cramer says, is after the product is revealed but before it gets in the hands of consumers. He anticipates negative media criticism of the product after the launch, which could result in a pullback.
-- Reported by Jeanine Poggi in New York.
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