Analysts scramble to raise AAPL targets

The iPhone 4’s momentum is beyond “our bullish expectations,” says Kaufman’s Shaw Wu

The Wall Street analysts who follow Apple (AAPL) — and there are dozens of them — continue to take a second look at their spreadsheets in the wake of those 3 million iPad sales, the extraordinary flood of iPhone 4 pre-orders and the glowing reviews this week in advance of Thursday’s iPhone launch.

As is their wont when Apple surprises them, the analysts have been bumping up their share price targets. Here are the ones we’ve heard about; we’ll add more as they come in:

Gleacher & Co.’s Brian Marshall: To $355 from $340. “Amazingly, in its first quarter of introduction, we believe the iPad family will exceed $2bil in revenue… Recall it took the the iPhone four quarters to cumulatively reach $2bil+ in revenue.” 6/23/2010
Deutsche Bank’s Chris Whitmore: To $375 from $350. “Apple is beginning the strongest product cycle in the company’s history, led by the iPad and iPhone 4 release later this week. iPhone demand is off the charts (600K+ pre-orders on first day) and iPad uptake remains strong; both appear to be tracking ahead of our previous expectation.” 6/22/2010
Susquehanna Financial’s Jeff Fidacaro: To $335 from $325. “Given the size of the iPhone 4 pre-order and our analysis of the expected upgrade cycle, particularly the remaining 3G users, we believe the full launch weekend of June 24-27 is shaping up to potentially be a 2 mln-3 mln iPhone event.” 6/18/2010
Kaufman Bros.’ Shaw Wu: To $340 from $320. “Based on our analysis of demand trends and supply chain data points, we believe our already above-consensus (which have been moving up) estimates are conservative, and thus raising estimates. Frankly, we find this remarkable as we are arguably still in a recession amid still high unemployment levels.” 6/17/2010
Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster: To $348 from $340. “Although it is difficult to gauge what percentage of units were set aside for pre-orders (vs. launch day walk-in sales), the fact that iPhone 4 had more pre-orders in one day than previous iPhone models is clearly a positive indicator.” 6/16/2010
Caris and Co.’s Robert Cihra: To $325 from $310. Cihra sees “a powerful succession of product cycle catalysts over the next three quarters,” according to Barrons‘ Eric Savitz, including iPhone 4, iPad and eventually iPhone for Verizon (VZ). 6/8/2010
Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty: To $332 from $310. “Our bull case assumes iPad is the fastest ramping mobile Internet device ever and our base case assumes it is the second fastest, after only netbooks.” 6/8/2010
Standad & Poor’s analyst Clyde Montevirgen: To $320 from $310. 6/18/2010