How The Apple Watch Could Influence iPhone Sales

The numbers keep on increasing, wherever Apple Inc. AAPL is concerned. While most analysts are predicting a big sale for iPhones in Q4, thanks to the holiday season, analysts at KGI Securities have topped them all by forecasting that Apple will sell a whooping 71.5 million iPhones in Q4.

Jon Steinberg, CEO of Daily Mail North America, and CNBC's Jon Fortt recently discussed the expected iPhone sales and how the Apple Watch can influence the sale of iPhones.

"To give you a little context, Gene Munster at Piper Jaffray I think is still at 61 million, BTIG is at 62.5 and Evercore ISI is at 65. So this is definitely the high-end at 71.5 of kind of where analysts are coming out," Fortt said.

"I think a key issue here is inventory. Apple is expected to hold more inventory than they have in the past. So, they are going to ship more, we know they are going to ship more and they always fall off after the holiday season. Actually, what they are expecting is, it would be high for the what would be the March quarter," Fortt added.

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According to Steinberg, "the big issue here is 41 million iPhone 6s, only 15 million iPhone 6 Pluses; That constraint may be due to actually an inability to produce the volume that they need for the iPhone 6 Plus."

Steinberg feels that the Apple Watch SDK that Apple put out last week is quite interesting. He thinks that ease of integration between Apple Watch and iPhone will actually help in boosting iPhone sales.

"That softness in the first quarter coming after the holiday, I think that might be a little too negative; I think we are going to see a lot of excitement with the watch," said Steinberg.

Shares of Apple recently traded at $118.23, up 1.5 percent.