AAPL passes all-time high of $427 a share, market cap closes in on $400B

An interesting occurrence happened this morning: In a run up to Apple’s Q1 2012 earnings call, and amid a steady flow of 2012 Consumer Electronics Show announcements where Apple traditionally does not exhibit, the company’s share reached an all-time high by passing $427 a share for a market valuation of $398 billion (Exxon Mobile is at $408.86 billion). As noted by Fortune’s Philip Elmer-Dewitt, the company passed the $426.70 mark it hit briefly one day in mid-October

Interestingly, several analysts boosted their iPhone estimates for the December quarter. Goldman most notably upped their iPhone estimate to 31 million quarterly units, up from the previous 30.2 million estimate. Needham significantly increased their previous 28 million units projection to 32 million units.

By the way, the Apple iPhone turned 5-years-old today. On this very day five years ago, Steve Jobs took the stage at MacWorld Expo to announce the original iPhone. The rest, as the saying goes, is history…

As per DigiTimes Research, Apple shipped 1.2 million MacBook Airs during the December quarter —a sequential increase at a time when every other PC vendor failed to keep their fourth-quarter notebook shipments at the same level recorded in the third quarter. The Cupertino, Calif.-headquartered gadget maker is set to announce its first fiscal 2012 quarter results matching the holiday calendar quarter on Jan. 24 at 2 p.m. PT/5 p.m. ET. As always, 9to5Mac will be live blogging the earnings call as it happens. It will be the first full quarter with Tim Cook in charge and the earnings call will cover a quarter in which we saw the release of the iPhone 4S, iOS 5 and iCloud.