Gottheil said he thought Apple would meet demand for its CDMA iPhone on Verizon as long as the company's projections were accurate, not something Apple has always managed.

The 's fourth quarter sales totaled 7.3 million, a jump of 75% from the prior period, and the second quarter running that the tablet has outsold Apple's Mac line.

However, the unit sale gap between the two widened in the last three months of 2010, with the Mac group selling just 56% as many systems as the iPad division did tablets. By comparison, in the third quarter -- the first when iPads outsold Mac -- Apple sold 97% as many Macs as iPads.

iPad sales were higher than the average projection of 6.2 million, and higher than all but three estimates by either Wall Street or amateur investment analysts, according to a table collated by earlier on Tuesday.

Apple racked up 2.9 million notebook sales, an increase of 10% over the previous quarter and 23% more than the same quarter of 2009.