Bill Shope of Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS), reiterated a Buy rating on Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) after raising his price target from $700 to $750. Shope cites strong iPad and iPhone sales as the main driver for the stock. The Goldman analyst now expects earnings per share of $10.18 on revenue of $36.9 billion in the 2nd quarter.

More importantly, Bill Shope raised his iPhone estimates from 28.2 million to 31.1 million. He also raised his iPad estimates from 10.1 million to 12.5 million. That is a raise in gross profit margin of 43.5% from 43.2%. However, Goldman sees slower Mac sales in the short term but they maintain that once Apple introduces the new models, Mac sales will be up again.

Goldman Sachs is obviously very bullish on Apple’s future and according to rumors surrounding the company an “amazing” product is expected to come out in the second half of this year. Apple rarely disappoints so it will be interesting to see what the new product is and how it will further change our daily lives. Some people speculate that the new product has to do with Apple TV but regardless my guess is that the new product is not anything that we have seen from Apple before.

More over, Apple’s campaign to expand into China seems to be going smoothly which will help the company further expand sales of the iPhone and iPad. If Apple can continue to sell the same volume of products here in the US and start growing sales in China and other countries, we could be looking at something big.

To address the recent volatility in the stock, behavioral finance claimed a new more people. Someone who had a lot of Apple shares decided to unload their holdings which brought down the prices. The fall in prices caused other Apple investors to panic and soon the stock begins to sell off for no real reason.

Goldman Sachs is right about Apple, this is going to be a big year. As I said before, Apple rarely unveils a dud so you can expect the latter half of this year to be big for the tech giant. Not to mention, I will also be watching for expanding influence in China which I believe will help the firm post even better and bigger numbers. Also, watch out for rumors in the coming months to see if we can get some details on the mystery product they are working on.