After the "iPhone sells eighteen billion handsets in just three minutes!" analyst prediction debacle around launch weekend, so far those whose job it is to foretell sales performance have been pretty quiet.  Well, no longer, as UBS' Ben Reitzes has peeped his head out from under the analysts' shell to suggest that Apple's fourth-quarter sales will hit 800k.

He goes on to suggest that by the end of September Apple will have sold 1.1million of the cellphone, while Christmas is seemingly the heavy period as that rises to a prediction of 2.5m by the end of the year.

It's possible that enthusiastic estimates might have a detrimental affect on Apple's own share performance, and certainly their stock wavered around AT&T's release of preliminary sign-up figures.  It's maybe in everybody's best interests to keep the assumptions relatively realistic.