Apple stock hits all time high of $636.34 on no news

Apple stock hits all time high of $636.34 on no news. Since the earnings releases a few weeks ago when the stock dropped a few per cent on what some people called disappointing news the stock has been trending upwards until yesterday when it passed the all-time high point.

What is driving AAPL higher?

Two things are going on that are starting to influence the stock price:

1.We have a potential pending releases on the next iPhone. Every year since the initial iPhone release we have had a new version. As expectations grow for an iPhone 5 there is more and more press coverage of what it will look like, what it will offer, when it will be available. Of course these are all unsubstantiated rumours and no one outside Apple has the real story. We do know however that there are many millions of iPhone 4 users who are outside of their 2 year contract and plenty of iPhone 4S users who are more than a year into their contract. A Gartner report on mobile phone sales. There are dates swirling around the Internet for an Apple announcement on Sept 12^th with a ship date of Sept 21^st. Whatever the day the release is made you can expect to see images of Tim cook with the new device in every paper and blog in the world to be followed shortly afterwards to pictures of long lines at Apple stores from Palo Alto to Paris.

2.While these rumours are based on historical trends and driven by expectations of new hardware and software we are uncovering real sales and development strategies from the intriguing court room drama in California in the Apple v Samsung law suite. What is very interesting is that Samsung has never been open about its real product sales numbers. Its annual reports paint a rosy picture but does a good job of obscuring product sales.  The court has now seen real sales number for the US phones and tablets. For Samsung these are tiny numbers.

For comparison Apple has sold 86 million iPhones in the US since the product launched in 2007 till now and 34 million iPad since its launch in 2010 till now. While Samsung has 21 million smart phones and just 1.4 million tablets in the same time periods. The raw data is a little confusing as there are so many products and variations. However as usual the clever chaps at Asymco have the great graphs to reveal what is happening.

As the case continues and more data appears we will keep you posted. Read More at Euro iPhone News.