Apple (AAPL) Shares Drop 10 Percent on Slowdown Worries

[DesMoinesDem]

Source: ABC News

Apple stock (Nasdaq: AAPL) took a hit the morning after its first-quarter earnings were released, falling about 10 percent. Investors are worried that growth is slowing at Apple, the world's most valuable company.

Shares of Apple dropped $52 to $462 at 10 a.m. EST. The tech-heavy Nasdaq index, in which Apple trades, was also down 0.27 percent to 3,145.

On Wednesday after the market closed, the company reported that it sold 47.8 million iPhones in the quarter, compared with 37 million in the same quarter a year ago. Many investors had hoped that the company would sell 50 million iPhones, which drives Apple's earnings.

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/aapl-apple-shares-fall-10-percent/story?id=18302290

---

When AAPL was near $700 someone here thought it would increase 60% within a year. Never take stock tips from the internet.

[emulatorloo]

1. So Apple sold 11 million more iPhones this quarter than it did in the same quarter a year ago?

And "analysts" see this as a "slowdown?"

Word to the wise - "analysts" have been claiming Apple is going out of business ever since the company started.

[TM99]

2. Except Apple was going out of business

in the early 1990's. Jobs return and the purchase of Next saved them after many a bad business decision. I used Macs at that time so please don't accuse me of being a 'hater'.

Jobs is now dead. Cook is not the same kind of 'visionary' (sociopathic control freak) that Jobs was. Apple is fine on the financials sitting on a nice amount of cash, however, they are no longer a growth stock. The market will now correct for that as Apple's current product line is mature and not innovating enough at this point to remain a growth stock. There is too much competition from other companies in the smart phone arena. Apple can not stop them all with patent lawsuits.

Apple like many tech darlings of Wall Street will have its amazing peak followed by a steady decline. If they can maintain things, and I see no reason they can not, then like IBM or Microsoft, they will simply remain a good solid stock to own in a balanced portfolio.

[sir pball]

3. I'm still absolutely kicking myself

Freshman year of college, October 1997...AAPL was under $20 a share. I had about $2500 left over from summer work. I was a raging fanboy; subscribed to MacAddict, on the EvangeList, deep in the comp.os flamewars. I had nothing but faith in the company. Was seriously considering buying stock as a show of that fait.

Aaaaand...I spent my money on beer and condoms instead. If I had spent it on Apple and sold it after the iP5 release - rough math says somewhere around 250K. Ah well, can't win them all.

[TM99]

5. I was a bit older then

and I was actively investing. I actually bought quite a bit of AAPL stock then. Sadly when I got ill, I had to cash in a lot of my savings in order to make it through what I was going through.

I have never been a fanboy of any tech company. I have used so many different computers and operating systems from so many different companies.

I used to like and use Apple computers quite a bit. I still run a few old G4's and G5's in my project studio at home. I just can't get into the new Apple. The more iOS takes over OS X and the increased focus on 'post PC' walled gardens and boutique expensive products is simply a turn off to me.

I spend most of my time using Linux and a few old XP boxes.

[sir pball]

6. I still use their systems

I finally caved last year when my 2003 Dual G4 stopped being able to play YouTube videos and bought a MacBook; with enough time and effort you can strip the latest OSX down to run fairly normally. I don't think they'll ever lock into an iOS-type environment; the default will move more and more that way but there's still a very large market of "creative professionals" that want the "classic" OS X experience (not the Classic experience that I dearly wish were still around...on a tangent, if you hunt around a bit you can find Rhapsody for Intel Developer Preview VMWare machines - how I wish that UI had stuck around!); not to mention the fairly newly entrenched base of geeks and programmers who fell in love with the middle-era releases for the super-slickness of XCode combined with the familiarity and strength of Unix. I can see them going so far as to hack up any locked-down releases; there's a small and sporadic project to tweak the kernel code so one can install Rosetta on the new versions; I'd expect and hope for more effort if needed.

If worse comes to it I'll just install older versions on newer hardware - their build quality is still superior to just about anything else out there, the higher cost is far offset by the longer useful lifespan.

I'm babbling..

[CountAllVotes]

8. Had a Mac SE 30

Now that was a very good computer and I had a little inkjet printer to go with it and I managed to get an entire thesis written and printed on it. May it RIP.

Then went Jobs.

Then Apple turned into the WORST COMPUTER EVER in about 1998 or so. Sadly, I had one of them. It came freshly delivered from Apple with what I suspect was a dead motherboard; not sure.

I had to return the POS to the vendor and got hit for re-stocking fees even though it could not be re-stocked nor used by anyone. It had a woman walking out on to the desktop when you turned it on and you had to turn her off, that much I remember.

After that, I never wanted another Apple/MacIntosh computer.

Then came Jobs back with his very clever mind and he made Apple what it became.

However, Apple is not Apple without Jobs and if I owned Apple stock, I would have sold it when Jobs died. You now have a company being run by a bunch of "replacements" but none are Steve Jobs.

So, as for the iMac, iPad, iTouch, iPhone, iThis, iThat, I am not interested in any of these high tech very pricey toys which you need a new one of about every 6 mos. or so it seems to me iBelieve.

May Apple RIP.

[TM99]

11. Could not agree more about the iProducts

When I want to listen to mp3's, and I don't often, I use a cheap little Chinese device.

You will probably laugh, but I still use an SE/30 to this day.

I have a IIfx rom in it making it 32bit clean. It is maxed out to 128mb of ram and has a 2 gig SCSI hard drive in it as well. I hacked OS 8.1 on it years ago and use it to only run an old copy of Opcode Galaxy Plus librarian/editor with an Opcode midi patch bay off the printer port. I have a lot of old synths and samplers in my project studio, and they just don't make synth librarians and editors anymore that will work with newer machines and older synths and samplers.

This Mac has been running strong with only a hard drive replacement for over 20 years. Apple just doesn't make machines like that anymore even after Jobs came back. The Apple I knew has been dead for many years. This is a new company more interested in a lifestyle and multimedia than in computing.

Ah, well.

[emulatorloo]

20. Yeah right. The iOS people are still there, Jonny Ives is still there

and so forth and so on. Yes Cook is not Jobs, but Jobs' people are.

Samsung have great product, but they don't have iOS.

MS Surface is yet another "iPad Killer" going down in flames.

[TM99]

22. And that's the problem right there

All iOS, all the time. Ives knows mobile only. It isn't enough.

Samsung doesn't need iOS. They have Android as do many other companies. A $99.00 Android 2.3 phone performs well enough for most of the world that just can't afford a $599.00 subsidized iPhone.

MS Surface doesn't have to be an iPad killer any more than Android needs to be an iOS killer. All they need to be is good enough and cheap enough to gain market share at Apple's expense and loss.

iOS is getting 'long in the tooth' for modern day blockbusteritis tech. Jobs' sick genius was the ability to see what others were doing, take it, and market the hell out of it as an innovation. Cook doesn't know how to do that. I highly doubt the iOS team does either.

It remains to be seen what will come next for Apple. Right now, they don't need a new blockbuster 'innovation'. They have plenty of cash in the bank, and as I said, they are sound on the fundamentals. I don't know anyone that is predicting that Apple is doomed or going out of business. However, they will not remain the belle at the ball for Wall Street as a must-have growth oriented stock without that trademark Apple pizzazz. That is why their stock is correcting - nothing more and nothing less.

[SoapBox]

4. Apple, lower your crazy high prices and maybe, MAYBE I would

consider buying one of your products.

Until then...uh, no.

[Xithras]

7. Apple is down about 35% in four months.

The stock hit $705 in mid September, and is trading in the $460 range now. If Apple can't engineer a turnaround, lots of people are going to watch their retirements go *poof* The poor saps who invested around $700 already have.

And this is why not a SINGLE DOLLAR of my retirement is invested in the stock market. There's no such thing as a "safe stock".

[CountAllVotes]

9. Yes and this was a "safe bet"

Hahahaa.

I don't have anything in the Wall Street casino either because nothing and I mean nothing is exempt from having happen to them as what we see happening to Apple today (and the past several months as well). It has become nothing but a bunch of overpriced toys for the rich and when I bought my first Macintosh, the price of $1500.00 was a load to pay for anything in 1985.

I refuse to put my hard earned retirement acct. money into a corrupt system with no checks nor balances that seem to be in any way real. It gives me a zero comfort level.

So, I'm with you, I strongly dislike the stock market and I feel like it is being shoved on me so hard that I feel I am being forced to invest in it by the banks et al. I won't do it; seen enough in my ~60 years of life.

So, yeah, I'm with you!

[dmallind]

10. Meanwhile I'm netting 1k/mo on 35k invested with not a single loss taken to date

There are perhaps no safe stocks to buy and forget about. There are hundreds (I average about 10 a month) of safe buys that will net you returns not available in less volatile investments. Anybody completely avoiding stocks (or other volatile things like currency or commodities) is guaranteeing anemic gains, if any gains at all in real terms.

[CountAllVotes]

12. Up 35% in 10 years

No losses, all gains, all FDIC/NCUA insured investments.

No worries, no fears, no sitting around watching a stupid TV tuned to the stock market channel all day long ... alas my life continues along quite well without the stock market and the hundreds of buys/sales a year that some have with it (must be a nightmare from hell with the IRS).

Hence, I don't need an accountant, I don't need a financial adviser, I don't have to worry about taxes and what I might or might not owe. No surprises here!

Works well for me; no fear of losing my butt on some "investment" that may or may not pan out. Simple is good!

[Xithras]

13. I've taken a more classic and time honored path toward retirement

Start a business, get it successful, pay someone else to run it, live off the profits. I've also been doing a bit of Angel investing lately, handing money to tiny startups in exchange for an ownership stake.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I've lost too much money in too many crashes to risk any more money on that gamblers den. I prefer investments that I have some control over, rather than ones where I'm just along for the ride.

FWIW, there was a time when I was making good money on the stock market and swore by it. That was before I realized that little investors cannot win in the long term. The market is rigged to benefit the institutional investors. Sooner or later, the little guy always loses.

[emulatorloo]

21. Yep, the stock market is for gamblers. And "analysts" are like panic stricken Chicken Littles

running around screaming that the sky is falling.

[BadgerKid]

14. OTOH, Netflix was up 42% today. n/t

[Canuckistanian]

15. Aww, such a shame

I never worshipped Apple products.

They always appeared to me as well-engineered, expensive versions of old technology, packaged as something exciting and never-before-thought of.

[fujiyama]

16. That's a good description of their products

I have owned only one Apple device - an iPhone 3G. It was a great phone at the time. It still works and I used it recently when travelling abroad. But since then I've moved on towards Android for the more open environment and customization.

One thing I will say - Apple products are incredibly intuitive and very well designed. But that, along with its packaging carries a price premium.

[littlemissmartypants]

19. Toilet Tissue is

sold the same way. Peace. lmsp

[Joel thakkar]

17. I never owned an iphone

they have very expensive iphone contract which is way out of my budget...however i do have an ipod touch and ipad.

They really need to make 3-4 different screen size iphone to compete now..

[littlemissmartypants]

18. Microsoft is a hold/buy. n/t