In addition to today’s Credit Suisse price target upgrade, there’s lots of interesting news for Apple in this pre-earnings (coming April 22) period. Here are the week’s top stories, aggregated from 24/7 Wall St. partner Apple Investor News:• Apple has placed an order for 100 million NAND Flash chips according to Asia’s Digitimes, normally a good source for channel news. Huge orders like this affect the entire Flash market and mean new products are coming.
• Ben Reitzes from Barclays Capital raised his estimate for AAPL to $143 by mid-year, noting expected excitement around June’s iPhone 3.0 launch.
• Apple raised iTunes prices on some songs to $1.29 this week, followed immediately by Amazon and Wal-Mart. iTunes song prices now range from 69 cents to $1.29.
• Apple updated its Xserve server line this week with faster, greener models using the Intel Nehalem Xeon processors. Keep an eye on Apple enterprise sales going forward.
• After surveying users, Autodesk is considering a Mac native version of its industry standard design and drafting software, AutoCad. There hasn’t been a Mac version of AutoCad since 1992.
• Apple was sued this week by Taiwan’s Elan Microelectronics, which claims that several Apple products, including the MacBook and iPod Touch, infringe upon its multi-touch patents.
• One more analyst: Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray says its annual teen survey revealed 16% of teens expect to buy an iPhone in the next six months. 8% already own one, up from 6% a year ago.
– Frank Cioffi, Apple Investor News.
(full disclosure: Cioffi owns AAPL shares)
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