Apple Thoughts - News & Reviews on all things Apple

"Shares of Apple Inc. today rose $3.455, or 1.49%, on lighter than average volume of 18,652,558 shares to set a new all-time closing high of $235.845."

That was yesterday of course, and today as of 11:35am Eastern time the stock is at $235.76 USD per share, down slightly. They are also listed as number three in the top five publicly traded companies, behind Exxon Mobil and Microsoft, the number one and number two companies respectively. What this means is that yesterday Apple jumped past Wal-Mart on the list, next stop Microsoft?

"New retail sales data shows Apple has continued to have strong Mac and iPod sales at the start of 2010, with February's numbers showing significant year-over-year growth."

iPod sales were also up 5% in January and 10% in February from the same time last year. They are calling 2010 the "Year of the Mac" over at Piper Jaffray, estimating sales for the March quarter in the 2.8 to 2.9 million range, and list a target price of $284.00 USD for Apple Stock during the next 12 months.

"Remember iCalShare? The calendar-sharing site-once touted by Steve Jobs during a Macworld Expo keynote-seemed to have vanished for a while, but it's now back, and even easier to use. iCalShare now provides more than 3,500 free calendars in 40 categories, with its search tool and interface both undergoing improvements in its latest incarnation."

You can check out all their calendars at their site, iCalShare, and it is worth a look. I use several of these for sport schedules and holidays. It is pretty easy, and the only requirement after creating an account is to make sure you use the iCalendar (.ics) format. This is a sharing site only, it doesn't help you create or host any, but it certainly makes finding that special or obscure calendar. And it beats finding all the dates and entering them manually!

"Another analyst has raised his price target for shares in Apple Inc. to US$210 per share, joining Thomas Weisel analyst Doug Reid who did the same thing on September 28th. Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner said in a research note that investors underestimate Apple's ability to generate profits from the iPhone, and moved his price target on the company's stock from $180 per share to $210."

As of about 5 minutes ago, Apple stock was at $184.56 USD, up a little over $3.00 USD today. This target price increase is based partly on a story we talked about previously, where accounting changes were going to be a benefit to Apple and others that are being allowed to change how they account for subscription based sales. We shall see.