FORTUNE — Apple (AAPL) had only just begun taking iPhone 5C pre-orders Sunday when Morgan Stanley’s AlphaWise Smartphone Tracker closed the books on Q3 2013, but the survey had already registered a bump in buyer interest in the company’s line of smartphones.
According to a note to clients posted early Wednesday by Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty, the survey’s data suggest sales of 34.5 million iPhones in calendar Q3 (Apple’s fiscal Q4).
That’s 11% better than the consensus forecast of 31 million, and 28% higher than the 26.9 million Apple sold in the same quarter last year.
But it’s not better than AlphaWise’s estimate of Samsung Galaxy sales. Those are forecast at 47 million, 2 million (4.4%) better than the Street’s consensus.
See chart below.
Huberty on methodology: “Our tracker includes Web search data through Sept 15, which incorporates the iPhone announcement on Sept 10 and the start of pre-orders on Sept 13. Our tracker includes the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, China and Japan, which are all countries launching the new iPhones this week. Our model projects demand for the rest of September assuming demand trends post last week’s announcement follow a similar pattern as 2012.”
