Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is the stock market darling that almost no one wants to hate.  Finding negative analyst reports is a difficult task.  The company over-delivers on most products and continually exceeds estimates.  Its products seem to almost never miss and it has become the #2 company in America by market cap.  All sentiment and history aside, it is at least fair to ask if Apple will be able to deliver in 2011.  We are taking a 360-degree
review of Apple’s chart, analyst estimates, price targets, its own outlook, outside forces, options trading, and more to see where Apple will be standing at the end of 2011.

It is almost impossible to bash Apple as a company.  Even though we have coined the phrase “consumer lemmingism” describing how customers amazingly do not revolt against Apple’s constant product version updates, it still wins.  We also recently went as far as outlining how passing Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) as the #2 company by market cap may only be a speed bump to becoming the most valuable company in America ahead of Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE: XOM).

Beyond our concerns and beyond our optimism, we want to look at the outside information to see what the 2011 prospects are for Steve Jobs and friends.  Analysts have been mostly positive of late… Goldman Sachs came out with a $430.00 price target after Morgan Stanley removed Apple from its “Best Idea List” but still maintained an Outperform rating.

The consensus analyst price target from Thomson Reuters is listed as just over $371 today.  With shares roughly at $326.00 on Wednesday, that implies consensus upside of almost 14%.  If Goldman Sachs is right at its $430 target, then Apple has an implied 32% upside from the current share price.