Morgan Stanley analyst Kathryn Huberty Wednesday cut Apple’s target price to $95, down from $100. Huberty pointed to a survey indicating weaker consumer interest.
Huberty also trimmed her expectations for calendar 2009 iPhone sales to 14 million handsets, down 
By contrast, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster expects Apple will sell 45 million iPhones next year.
A Morgan Stanley survey revealed 5 percent of consumers expressed “extreme” interest in the iPhone. That’s down from 7 percent in February of 2007.
The analyst said Apple could increase demand for the iPhone by reducing pricing, a possibility “increasingly likely,” according to Huberty.
Huberty also cut her forecast for Mac sales in calendar 2009 to 9.9 million, down from 10.8 million. She maintained expectations Apple will report selling 2.6 million Macs during the December period.
The analyst predicted iPod sales will drop 30 percent in calendar 2009 with 34.3 million iPods sold next year, down from 37.5 million.
“Huberty has turned lowering Apple targets into a bloodsport,” CNBC’s Jim Goldman reported Wednesday. Goldman noted the analyst previouslt was off by 700,000 iPhone sales, 2 million iPod shipments and 200,000 Mac sales.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
