Can’t wait for the debut of Kindle 2.0, which should arrive around 10 a.m. this morning in New York?

Here’s a splash of cold water, courtesy of Jeffrey Lindsay: The Bernstein Research analyst says Amazon’s much-hyped e-book reader is merely a “niche product”–and that the e-commerce giant wants to keep it that way.

Lindsay’s argument in a nutshell: Electronic delivery of content may be the future of Amazon’s (AMZN) business, but it’s going to make most of its money selling physical goods for a long time to come. So Jeff Bezos and company won’t make the moves that, say, Steve Jobs and Apple (AAPL) might make if those guys were pushing e-books.

Lindsay: “Unlike Apple with the iPod, which cannibalized somebody else’s sales–namely the music industry–Amazon with Kindle is in part cannibalizing sales of its bestselling product, and this must be factored into the economics.”

Translation: Don’t expect to see super-cheap (say, $99) Kindles anytime soon.

Lindsay’s numbers aren’t radically different than those of Mark Mahaney, the Citi (C) analyst who has been notably bullish about the Kindle and its impact on Amazon’s business.

Both men estimate that Amazon sold about 500,000 devices last year. And while Mahaney thinks Amazon’s hardware and software sales will be a $1.2 billion business by the end of next year, Lindsay has a more conservative $900 million estimate.

Even by 2012, when Lindsay thinks Amazon will be selling two million Kindles a year, this won’t mean that much: Amazon’s revenues could actually decline by 0.6 percent because of slower physical book sales, while the company’s earnings would increase by perhaps 2.9 percent, the analyst predicts.

All worthy thoughts to contemplate–a little later on today. But in the very near term, most Kindle-watchers will be focused on more prosaic concerns. Like are those “leaked” Kindle 2.0 product shots real? We should have answers in a few hours, when Amazon holds its press conference at the Morgan Library.

Check back at All Things Digital at 10 a.m., where I’ll be liveblogging the event.

The company predicted that it would have 10.1 million to 10.3 million subscribers by the end of March, and 10.6 million to 11.3 million by the end of the year. Those numbers trump consensus expectations of 9.6 million and 10.3 million, respectively.

The rest of the company’s guidance was also strong: Netflix beat expectations with its predictions for Q1 and full-year revenue and earnings per share.

The company had already tipped its hand about its Q4 results when it told investors that it had “a remarkably strong quarter,” so those numbers aren’t that important in Wall Street’s eyes. For what it’s worth, the company posted earnings of 38 cents per share on revenues of $359 million versus expectations of 34 cents a share and $354 million.

“Consumers embraced the Netflix experience in near record numbers last quarter,” said CEO Reed Hastings, “with growth in our core DVD offering and growing momentum with internet streaming.”

Investors have been betting for quite some time that Netflix would be able to weather a recession, and even thrive during one, as consumers hunker down in front of their flat screens instead of spending money on more expensive entertainment. And they’re also hopeful about the strides the company had made toward delivering movies via broadband–a technology that so far flummoxed rival Blockbuster (BBI).

I’ll be listening to the company’s earnings call, which begins at 5 p.m. Eastern time, and will update this post if there’s anything particularly illuminating.

Here’s Citi (C) analyst Mark Mahaney’s helpful “cheat sheet” if you want to evaluate the results on your own (click to enlarge):

[Image Credit: jeknee]

One of the first duties for new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz: Deliver a brutal fourth-quarter report card for the company she just inherited.

So says Citi (C) analyst Mark Mahaney, who predicts that Yahoo (YHOO) will post a one percent year-over-year decline in its core display ad business when it reports fourth-quarter earnings Jan. 27. That would be the first time that’s ever happened in the company’s history. Mahaney, in his best dry analyst-speak, describes that as a “significant negative.”

It also won’t be a huge surprise: As the chart above (click to enlarge) illustrates, Yahoo’s display advertising has been weakening throughout the year. The same has been happening to its peers, too: Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL may be about to post an 18 percent drop in its ad revenue.

Industrywide, Mahaney thinks, display ads will climb two percent this year. (That makes him an optimist in some quarters.)

And if Bartz does have to deliver lousy news, now is the best possible time to do it: This will get laid at the feet of Jerry Yang, Sue Decker and the economy in general.

Next quarter, though? A different story.