“Apple released its financials last week, and 2006 was a very, very good year for the company. However, its forecast suggests that 2007 may be starting out as one of Apple’s worst years this decade,” Rob Enderle writes for TechNewsWorld.

“Coming out of 2006, you would think that Apple would be excited about 2007 — but the company’s forecast to the financial analysts was anything but, and its market valuation dropped sharply as a result. This will be a difficult year for Apple, and the iPhone could be more of a drag on earnings than a help,” Enderle writes.

Enderle writes, “The reason is that it doesn’t show up until mid-year, and it probably won’t be fully cooked even then. It comes in at a nosebleed price, it has really lousy estimated battery life, it uses the aging 2.5G wireless network, and both the hardware and the OS on it are relatively new — read probably buggy. The iPhone is looking like a really good generation 2 or 3 product, but it won’t have a big generation 1 impact.”

“Because the iPhone is still months off, many who might have otherwise purchased an iPod in the first half of the year will likely hold and wait to see this thing before they purchase. That should put a drag on iPod sales on top of what typically comes after a really good quarter — and its fourth quarter 2006 was a really good quarter. A lot of folks have new iPods as a result, and these people won’t be buying new ones anytime soon,” Enderle writes.

Enderle writes, “Apple is clearly not going away — but this year, compared to last, will be really nasty for the company.”

Full pail of drivel, Think Before You Click™, here.

• “I think the iPhone’s going to do very well.” – Rob Enderle in an interview with MarketWatch’s Tracy Johnke on January 09, 2007, the day Apple introduced iPhone.

• “The 4th quarter will be Apple’s hardest since the first iPod Christmas.” – Rob Enderle wrote for Digital Trends on September 15, 2006. Last week Apple posted revenue of $7.1 billion and a record net quarterly profit of $1 billion for their quarter ended December 30, 2006.

• ”The fourth quarter, in particular, should be ugly for Apple.” – Rob Enderle wrote for TechNewsWorld on August 8, 2005. Apple subsequently reported what was, at the time, the highest revenue ($5.75 billion) and earnings ($565 million) in the company’s history for their quarter ended December 31, 2005.

• ”This year will be more difficult [for Apple.]” – Rob Enderle wrote for Digital Trends on January 17, 2005. For fiscal 2005, Apple subsequently generated revenue of $13.93 billion and a net profit of $1.335 billion, reflecting annual growth of 68 percent and 384 percent, respectively, and representing what was, at the time, the highest annual revenue and net profit in Apple’s history.

• As far as iPods go, any analyst who thinks that Apple will not be making any iPod-related announcements between now and June is incompetent.

• Ask the ECT News Network (includes TechNewsWorld) why they continue to employ a so-called analyst who makes inconsistent statements regarding products in different media outlets and who is consistently wrong with his predictions: http://www.ectnews.com/perl/contact_form.pl?to=letters

Related articles:
Enderle: Apple’s iPhone is going to do very well – January 09, 2007
Enderle revels in ‘collapsing’ iTunes Store sales that are actually surging – December 18, 2006
Enderle: Microsoft’s Zune could be very successful – November 07, 2006
Enderle: ‘4th quarter will be Apple’s hardest since the first iPod Christmas’ – September 18, 2006
Enderle spouts some incredible nonsense about Apple iPod+iTunes – July 07, 2006
Tech pundit Enderle: ‘Microsoft wrote the first Mac OS’ – September 28, 2005
Tech Pundit Enderle: ‘fourth quarter should be ugly for Apple’ – August 09, 2005
Enderle: ‘iPod Halo Effect is just a myth, same thing as having Paris Hilton visit Apple stores’ – May 02, 2005
Tech pundit Enderle: Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger’s main features ‘borrow heavily from Longhorn’ – May 02, 2005
Tech Pundit Enderle: ‘This year will be more difficult for Apple Computer’ and iMacs in earthquakes – January 24, 2005