Prediction for Apple's earnings today

Business 2.0 has a nice roundup of the various opinions on Apple's earnings results due at 5 pm Eastern Standard Time today. Our prediction is in our new Analyzing Apple report, but suffice it to say that for one of the first times in a while, we're in the middle of the consensus estimate. We do differ a bit in detail on the product mix; we think that the Mac business and iPod businesses are doing better than most think, but that higher development and marketing expenses for new products are keeping net profits down.

If we had two words to provide people thinking about Apple stock going forward, they would be "lumpy earnings." But hey, if that weren't the case and Apple were always going to beat consensus estimates by a penny per share, there wouldn't be any challenge in analyzing the company, would there?