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FORTUNE — With one day to go before Apple (AAPL) is scheduled to report its earnings for the March quarter – Q2 in Apple’s fiscal year — the expectations of the analysts polled for Fortune’s quarterly round-up are not high.
In fact, they’re either flat or down across the board according to the 40 analysts we’ve heard from so far. (See Handicapping Apple’s earnings.)
Earnings per share may come in higher — 2.4% higher to $10.33, by the analysts’ consensus — but mostly because Apple has purchased enough of its own shares to lower the denominator in E/S from nearly a billion shares to less than 890 million.
As for revenue, most of our analysts (31 out to 40) are playing it safe, offering estimates within the range of Apple’s guidance — between $42 billion and $44 billion.
Seven think Apple will beat its revenue guidance — by half to three-quarters of a billion dollars, according to Merrill Lynch’s Scott Craig and the Braeburn Group’s Patrick Smellie, respectively. Two analysts — Credit Suisse’s Kulbinder Garcha and the Braeburn Group’s Sunil Shah — think Apple’s revenue may actually come in below the low end of Apple’s guidance.
Of the four analysts, Merrill’s Craig has the best track record. In last year’s Earnings Smackdown he took first place with earnings and revenue estimates that were off by less than 1%.
None of Apple’s hardware product lines is expected to show much growth this time around, and iPod sales may fall by more than 45% year over year.
In fact, the only Apple line item that is expected to show anything approaching steady growth is iTunes, Software and Services, and its growth is expected to decelerate from nearly 26% last year to less than half that. One factor slowing things down: Apple’s decision to give away its productivity suite — Pages, Numbers and Keynote — for free.
Below: The individual analyst’s Q2 2014 estimates, with the pros in blue, the indies in green (plus Apple’s high and low guidance numbers in red). I’ll run my quarterly Earnings Smackdown after Wednesday’s earnings call and hope to post the quarter’s list of the best and worst analysts Thursday morning.
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