Apple iPhone sales reach 35 million in Apple’s First Quarter

We already know that the holidays were quite good for both cell phone providers and manufacturers, as a record number of smart phones were activated this holiday season. Now it looks like Apple managed to sell a huge amount of iPhones during the first quarter of the 2012 fiscal year as well.

Analysts already expected the Apple iPhone sales to reach 30 million for the first quarter, largely due to the success of the iPhone 4S, which was released 13 days after the start of the first quarter. Now these same analysts are predicting that Apple will announce that iPhone first quarter sales were actually closer to 35 million.

The news comes on the heels of Verizon’s announcement that they sold 4.2 million Apple iPhones from October 1^st-December 31^st 2011. Verizon CFO Fran Shammo said that this was more than double the number of iPhones that were sold in the third quarter of 2011.

According to analyst Walter Piecyk, the higher estimate for iPhone sales comes from both the Verizon announcement and AT&T’s reference to strong iPhone sales last month. Piecyk also feels that Apple may sell a record 125 million iPhones during 2012.

Of course, we won’t know exact numbers until Apple reports earnings to investors on January 24^th. It is possible that these numbers may be lower or higher than the actual numbers.