After reading the dismal report that AT&T managed to sign up “only” 146,000 new subscribers for the iPhone, Apple’s stock started spiraling downward in the days before it released its quarterly earnings report. The street was abuzz with people speculating that Apple couldn’t move the iPhone as predicted, and according to AT&T’s records, the proof seemed to be in the numbers. That was Monday.

Today, July 25th, Apple released its quarterly earnings numbers after the bell, and melted people’s faces off with their numbers. According to an article on BloggingStocks.com, Apple earned investors $.20 a share ABOVE expectations for the quarter. I know $.20 is something you generally pick up on the street, but when you own 5.5 million shares, as Steve Jobs does, well, you can just mess around with the decimal place to see what kind of money that is.

If ever there was an example to show that doing as much research as possible is a good thing, this would be it. Mr. Yared, who wrote the Bloggingstocks.com article mentioned above, said it best “The iPhone became available the evening of June 29th and the quarter ended June 30th–30 lousy hours of activation time for AT&T.” This shows that the hype surrounding the lack of activations reported by AT&T was just an overreaction to some seemingly pretty strong data. I did not catch this fact either, and thought a few friends who are apple holders would be in for some sticker shock when their stocks dropped as a result of the iPhone release, rather than go up as they expected. I was wrong, and it seems that because of this date discrepancy, Apple may be able to report more of their iPhone earnings in the next quarter as well. The price to earnings ratio is still out of my league, but here is to hoping that all who do own Apple stock get to see yet another stellar earnings report later on this year.

The admin of this site and author of this post, Jon Steege, is not a financial analyst or a stock broker. He is a Computer Scientist with a knack for data analysis. He has always marveled at Apple’s stock, but has never had the opportunity to invest in it. As always, Jon has no direct financial interest in any stock he mentions, he is simply a speculative observer.