Appleis stock closed on Friday at US$124.49 a share as anticipation over what CEO Steve Jobs may surprise us with during his World Wide Developers Conference keynote continued to grow. By Monday morning, the stock had climbed over $126 in pre-market trading.
Mr. Jobs is expected to show developers more of the companyis upcoming Mac OS X 10.5 operating system, and will likely also reveal that the release will replace the familiar HFS+ file system used today with Sunis ZFS file system.
During a presentation in Washington D.C. last week, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz announced that Apple was planning on using the ZFS file system in Mac OS X 10.5. His announcement came ahead of Steve Jobsi WWDC keynote - scheduled for later Monday morning.
Many are also speculating that Mr. Jobs will announce that Apple is opening the iPhone to third-party developers, and how the company will go about doing that. Allowing developers outside of Apple to write applications for the iPhone could make the combination smartphone and iPod even more appealing to customers, many of which are ready to camp out to get one when it is released on June 29.
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster estimated Apple will sell 3.2 million units before the end of 2007, 12.4 million in 2008, and a staggering 45 million in 2009.
Apple is currently trading at $126.25, up 1.76 (1.41%).
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