A panel of crisis management experts surveyed by Cult of Mac seem to agree on one thing: an iPhone 4 recall is inevitable. That said, there's plenty of opinion on the other side of the fence.

The crisis management experts said the following:

Professor Matthew Seeger, an expert in crisis communication: “Apple will be forced to do a recall of this product. It’s critically important. The brand image is the most important thing Apple has. This is potentially devastating.”

Dr. Larry Barton, a leading expert in crisis management and author of Crisis Leadership Now: “Apple needs to put this fire out now. There has to be a military-like response to this issue. And we have not seen this kind of urgency.”

Crisis communications expert Chris Lehane who managed bad PR for the Clinton White House said that Apple rushed their response: “It’s the ‘half-loaf’ approach. Apple was under tremendous pressure to respond. They pushed out some information that wasn’t really baked." Additionally, he contrasted this iPhone 4 response to their response to complaints about the price drop of the original iPhone way back in 2007. “You acknowledge it; you address it; you deal with it. Apple must protect its brand image, its crown jewels, at all cost. Apple has enormous consumer loyalty but it depends on whether people believe it’s credible.”

On the other hand, analysts, who probably have a better "grip" (pun intended) on how consumer backlash might affect Apple's bottom line, were all in the other camp. Surveyed by Digital Daily, they said:

Citigroup analyst Richard Gardner: “We consider the probability of a recall to be very low given our view that the issue in question is not serious enough to warrant a recall. While bridging two portions of the antenna with one’s hand on the lower-left corner of the phone does cause signal degradation, it does not typically result in dropped calls unless the signal from the cell tower is already weak. Excluding this issue, overall signal reception on iPhone 4 seems at least as good, if not slightly better, than reception on the iPhone 3GS.”

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster: “We see [a recall] as a highly unlikely scenario given the issue is completely resolved with a case, which is a significantly less expensive solution for the company.” (Ah, yes, but that would involve, perhaps, giving away bumpers, which Apple has already told their CS to avoid)

Barclays Capital's Ben Reitzes: “As users, we have experienced some issues w/call drops; however, we have found drops go away after attaching a bumper accessory, which is quite useful anyway. To date, we have not seen any overwhelming evidence of iPhone 4 units being returned."

Of course, Apple stock did dip slightly on Tuesday, down around 2 percent by mid-Tuesday afternoon, ET. That is hardly a cause for alarm for Apple shareholders.

However, it's true that the incident has turned into a huge black eye for Apple, and an embarrassment for iPhone 4 users, who face the gibes of their Android-toting friends. We, personally, believe that free bumpers might silence the hordes.

Really, if Apple wanted to recall anything related to the iPhone 4, it should recall AT&T.