Stefan Mileschin

Fruity cargo cult Apple is expected to release fairly dull results tomorrow and not even Wall Street, or its tame press can be optimistic.

Jobs' Mob is one of the few companies which has not done badly this quarter, but it is still not expected to do very well.

Optimists told Reuters it is because punters are not buying Apple gear because they are waiting for the new iPhone. Pessimists say that Apple is fast becoming old hat, out of touch with its customers, who don't want to part with their cash because of the economic crisis.

The iPhone 5 will hit store shelves around October with a thinner, larger screen and apparently better search features.

But with slowdowns in Europe and China, Wall Street does not think that the company can pull any rabbits out of the hat.

Tim Lesko, portfolio manager at Granite Investment Advisors told AP that Apple is not the company that beats every time. While he expects the company to beat own guidance, it is unlikely to beat what Wall Street thinks it should be making.

There is even a reasonable chance Apple will miss expectations on revenue, because of "macroeconomic weakness in China and Europe, a product cycle lull in the iPhone, a later than expected introduction of the new iPad into China, and the late quarter introduction of new Mac notebooks.

But there some other problems for Apple. The first is that nearly half of its money is made by flogging iPhones. At the moment this market is being chipped away by Samsung and other manufacturers. It has managed to make its fortune by being ahead of the game, but at the moment it is becoming a sitting target with no new ideas coming forward.

This means that rivals can make similar gear, cheaper and take on Apple. The current iPhone 4S has only been on the market for three quarters, which is new by smartphone standards. But the fact Apple tends to push out a new phone every year means that after six months its current phone starts to appear old hat.

The difficulty with this, is that there are only so many changes you can come up with for a smartphone in a short space of time. Apple's iPhone 4S was practically the same as the iPhone 4.

Wall Street thinks that Apple will miss the average sales forecast by about 0.2 percent. It thinks that the company only sold about 29 million iPhones, down from 35.1 million sold in the March quarter. Sales of the new iPad are expected to be 14 million to 15 million.

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