Apple results eyed for iPhone sales

San Francisco: Apple Inc. is widely expected to show a 35 per cent surge in quarterly profit this week. However, the show stealer is likely to be on just the two days, i.e. the last 48 hours of June when it finally launched its highly anticipated iPhone.

Investors are eager to hear the first official information on how many of the combination phone, Web browser, media player devices were sold at launch, direct feedback about initial demand for the iPhone, which is expected to reinforce the robustness predicted earlier.

However, analysts believe that till iPhone shipments count tens of millions of units a year, Apple's underlying financial performance will still be rooted largely in its Macintosh computers and iPod music players.

For Apple's third fiscal quarter, analysts are looking for unit shipments of Mac computers to rise more than 25 percent from a year earlier, led by new laptops with upgraded parts.

The Mac is growing at more than double the rate of the overall PC market, riding on iPod buyers switching to Mac computers. Recent industry trends show Apple gaining against PCs running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system software.