Apple may fall victim to its own hype machine when it reports earnings next week, as intense interest in the upcoming iPhone 8 has the analyst community pushing its iPhone sales forecast out to the end of the year and into 2018.

Analysts now expect the Cupertino, California-based giant shipped 41 million of its bread-and-butter handsets in its fiscal third quarter, about 20 per cent less than the 50.7 units it moved in the prior quarter.

In spite of the lower sales estimate for the quarter that will be reported on Tuesday, Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Olson thinks markets will be forgiving due to pent-up demand for a new iteration of the flagship product. In a July 21 research note to clients, Olson wrote that he expects a hum-drum third quarter that could see Apple miss profit and revenue estimates, but he doesn’t anticipate that will rattle shareholders.

“We believe any ‘hiccups’ in June results would be glossed over as investors focus on the upcoming iPhone launch,” Olson wrote. “We do not expect investors will be overly unnerved by an outlook that is slightly below consensus, given the widespread news flow around potential for next gen iPhone delays.”

Olson, who has the equivalent of a “buy” rating on the stock and a 12-month target price of US$158 on the shares, has subsequently shifted 4 million unit sales in his forecast to the first quarter of next year.

That pent up demand is in large part due to the view the next handset will be markedly different from the current iPhone 7. Apple is expected to make a splash with its 10th anniversary model, including the option of a OLED screen spanning the entire face of the phone, wireless charging and an upgrade to the current operating system.

The lack of a wide-ranging overhaul over the last two product refreshes may in fact be a boon for the company’s bottom line, according to both Olson and J.P. Morgan analyst Rod Hall. Both estimate there are more than 300 million Apple customers carrying iPhones more than two years old, raising the possibility of an iPhone sales super cycle for not just the coming year, but perhaps the two that follow.

“Even though an iPhone ‘super cycle’ has been much discussed, we believe that Street numbers still fail to capture the size of the likely replacement cycle assuming Apple delivers a compelling product this year,” Hall wrote in a note to clients July 19. “As a result of the size of this cycle and this spreading effect, we expect Apple to sustainably beat Street estimates well into 2018.”

Hall also has a buy rating on Apple, and a more bullish price target of US$165.

Pricing of the anniversary-edition phone will be key to sustaining such a cycle. Though Apple traditionally occupies the top end of the smartphone market, it typically prices its handsets within US$100 of the flagship models sold by competitors like Samsung. Analysts are on average forecasting the new model will bring Apple’s average selling price into the mid-$700 range, a healthy increase from the US$655 it recorded in the second quarter.

Though Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was famous for declaring “one more thing” to launch new products, little in the way of innovation is expected outside of further details on the new iPhone. The company has confirmed it killed off the iPod Shuffle and Nano on Thursday, and has seen sales of the iPad decline on a year-over-year basis in each of the last 14 quarters.

On average, analysts estimate Apple will report US$1.57 in third-quarter earnings per share on revenue of US$44.9 billion after the closing bell on Tuesday.