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HITS Daily Double
“Ordinarily, this is where you’d expect to find a review of it. But honestly—what’s the point? The iPhone 4 is already a hit.”
——David Pogue

SAY HELLO TO STEVE’S LITTLE FRIEND... THE iPHONE 4

Apple’s Empire Scores Another Direct Hit, as the Tech Giant’s Batting Average—Like the Stock Price—Continues to Be Mindbogglingly High
The iPhone 4, which arrives today from the gang at Apple, is already selling briskly—what else is new?—stealing the spotlight back from Google’s surging Android attackers, and the initial run of reviews from respected geeks has been uniformly positive. “Ordinarily, this is where you’d expect to find a review of it,” David Pogue wrote in the lead of his N.Y. Times review. “But honestly—what’s the point? The iPhone 4 is already a hit... In short, the public seems to be perfectly capable of sniffing out a winner without the help of tech critics.”

Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg was equally impressed. “While attractive, capable new smartphones emerge regularly from competitors,” Mossberg noted, “ a new iPhone deserves special attention for two reasons. First, the device lies at the center of a huge ecosystem of 225,000 apps, plus popular related gadgets like Apple’s iPod touch connected media player and iPad tablet, which collectively are approaching 100 million units sold. Second, the iPhone’s multitouch, gesture-based interface; elegant web browser; sophisticated music and video playback; and other features have been emulated on many competing devices, so what Apple does affects the whole industry.

“I’ve been testing the iPhone 4 for more than a week,” Mossberg continued. “In both hardware and software, it is a major leap over its already-excellent predecessor, the iPhone 3GS. It has some downsides and limitations—most important, the overwhelmed AT&T network in the U.S., which, in my tests, the new phone handled sometimes better and, unfortunately, sometimes worse than its predecessor... But, overall, Apple has delivered a big, well-designed update that, in my view, keeps it in the lead in the smartphone wars.”

The new iPhone’s arrival, on the heels of Apple’s announcement that it sold more than 3 million iPads during the revolutionary device’s first 80 days of availability, has Wall Street analysts sounding more like lovestruck fans rather than objective observers, despite broader concerns about a stock market correction, as Digital Music News pointed out this morning. The most euphoric of them, Deutsche Bank’s Chris Whitmore, is calling for a 12-month target of $375.

"Apple is beginning the strongest product cycle in the company’s history," Whitmore said, citing "incredibly robust" demand for the latest iPhone and continued strength for the iPad.

Gene Munster (Piper Jaffray) is only a skosh less bullish, pegging the stock at $348, while Shaw Wu (Kaufman Bros.) is at $340 and Katy Huberty (Morgan Stanley) has settled on $332. Apple shares are ping-ponging in the low $270s this morning, though most expect it to continue its extended run-up into the $300s.

In related news, Apple has reportedly filed a new patent infringement lawsuit against HTC, which manufactures the Android for Google.