Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) launched the iPhone 5S and 5C on Friday and has already sold more than 9 million of them (a new record for iPhone launch weekend), with most of those sales being the more expensive iPhone 5S. Interestingly enough, the revenue the company raked in on all those sales is more than what BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) is worth—in whole, without being broken up into parts.
BlackBerry makes a big announcement
Today BlackBerry finally revealed a plan to save its future. Prem Watsa’s firm Fairfax Financial is spearheading a consortium of firms to save the struggling company. The group plans to take BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) private for $9 a share—a total of $4.7 billion. Of course the company is still able to look at offers from others, but this may be the only offer it gets.
Also Fairfax and the other firms in the consortium have six weeks for due diligence, so they could still back out if things look worse than they appear at BlackBerry.
Apple’s raking it in
Today Steve Kovach of Business Insider pointed out that that the $4.7 billion valuation of BlackBerry puts it below the amount of revenue Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) raked in on its new iPhone 5S and 5C models in just three days. Although we already have data from multiple sources suggesting that most of this past week’s new iPhone sales were of the iPhone 5S, Kovach says even if the less expensive iPhone 5C made up the bulk of the sales, the least Apple would have made in revenue was $5 billion.
Of course Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) raised its revenue guidance for the fourth quarter, based on the strong launch weekend for the two new iPhones. A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission today states that the company now expects its September quarter to be toward the high end of the estimate it made in July.
That previous guidance was between $34 billion and $37 billion for the September quarter. The company is also projecting to see gross margins to be at the high end of its previously provided range of 36 percent to 37 percent.
