Apple falls close to a freak-out level

[tomm2thumbs]

Source: USA Today

The brutal 30% drop in the stock from its high has erased $224 billion in investors wealth - which exceeds the market value of all but a handful of the stocks in the Standard & Poor's 500. Apple's profits are so large and important, they are expected to account for 7.2% of the operating earnings reported by all the companies in the Standard & Poor's 500, says Howard Silverblatt of S&P Dow Jones Indices. <snip>

Shares of the gadget maker plunged early Wednesday by as much as 3.4% to $93.42. The decline in Apple knocked the battleground stock near the $92 a share it fell to last August during a market malfunction. This freak-out low is the next big challenge for the shares - as investors wonder how low the stock can go. <snip>

Milunovich and most other analysts - despite the historic value crash in Apple - remain firmly bullish about the company and its shares longer term.



Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2016/01/20/apple-nears-yet-another-scary-low/79065726/

[emulatorloo]

1. The whole market has been falling

[thesquanderer]

5. And Newton told us that apples fall like everything else (n/t)

[emulatorloo]

9. ...

[corkhead]

23. yes, it was an epic crash and burn

[Politicub]

26. I love the old Apple interface - icons and fonts

It's improved tremendously, but your post gave me a hit of nostalgia.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

35. It looks like the old monochrome Palm OS.

The old stuff, that ran up to Palm OS 3.0.

[dembotoz]

2. apple is mortal???? who would have thunk it

[msongs]

3. its market is saturated, one can only upgrade the same old cell phone so many times. nt

[christx30]

7. But it's THINNER!

And the camera is... um... something, I'm sure.

[Helen Borg]

24. The camera is higher res!

Because, you know, you have to see the pores inside the pores on a person's face!

[christx30]

28. It lets you see their inner beauty. N/t

[Helen Borg]

29. Ahah, yeah, also known as "sebum"!

[Hoppy]

4. That's true. There is nothing inspiring about the 6 or the 6s. Reports about the 7 don't seem that

"Gotta get it" either.

[AgingAmerican]

6. Yay!

I have zero sympathy for a company that employs slave labor

[former9thward]

11. And what company made the device you are posting from?

Oh, that's right, one that employs "slave labor".

[AgingAmerican]

21. Lenovo

100% made in USA

So you are a MAC person? My condolences.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

33. "100% made in USA" Lenovo? Are you sure?

With all due respect, I urge you to open that Lenovo and see where the parts come from.

Lenovo

Lenovo Group Ltd. /lɛnˈoʊvoʊ/ is a Chinese multinational computer technology company with headquarters in Beijing, China, and Morrisville, North Carolina, United States. It designs, develops, manufactures and sells personal computers, tablet computers, smartphones, workstations, servers, electronic storage devices, IT management software and smart televisions. In 2014, Lenovo was the world's largest personal computer vendor by unit sales. It markets the ThinkPad line of notebook computers and the ThinkCentre line of desktops.

Lenovo has operations in more than 60 countries and sells its products in around 160 countries. Lenovo's principal facilities are in Beijing, Morrisville and Singapore, with research centers in those locations, as well as Shanghai, Shenzhen, Xiamen, and Chengdu in China, and Yamato in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. It operates a joint venture with EMC, LenovoEMC, which sells network-attached storage solutions. It also has a joint venture with NEC, Lenovo NEC Holdings, which produces personal computers for the Japanese market.

Lenovo was founded in Beijing in 1984 as Legend and was incorporated in Hong Kong in 1988. Lenovo acquired IBM's personal computer business in 2005 and agreed to acquire its Intel-based server business in 2014. Lenovo entered the smartphone market in 2012 and as of 2014 is the largest vendor of smartphones in Mainland China. In January 2014, Lenovo agreed to acquire the mobile phone handset maker Motorola Mobility from Google, and in October 2014 the deal was finalized.

Full disclosure: I own shares of AAPL. At work, I use a Chinese-made Dell. At home, I use a G4 iBook that I rescued from a trash pile. It might have been made in Japan. I'll check when I get home. I also own PCs and other Macs, and I have a tablet that runs Android. I acquired all my computers and other such devices secondhand.

[olddad56]

8. it bounced off the low for the day and closed at $96.79, slightly up for the day.

a non story

[Skittles]

10. still proud to say I have never bought an Apple product

[snoringvoter]

14. Neither have I.

My wife is an Apple iPhone convert, but I intend to reconvert her back to Android.

[Helen Borg]

27. I bought a bunch...

But never with my own money. Only with grants and all that. I find iPads incredibly annoying. That you cannot just plug it into a USB port and have it show up as an external device where you can drag any kinds of files to/from it!

[kristopher]

12. Milunovich probably isn't a long term Mac user.

Mac has moved further and further away from a focus on a seamless, intuitive user interface to a focus on next quarter profitability and maximizing every revenue stream any bean counter has a wet dream about.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

13. The iPhone lives and dies by carrier subsidies and those are rapidly going away

and internationally Apple aggressively adjusts foreign pricing to reflect the strengthening US dollar.

And you can buy a pretty nice Android or Windows Phone device for under $200... meanwhile I have yet to see a compelling reason to upgrade my iPhone 5.

I don't think Apple is flexible enough to elegantly adjust to losing their market power. That leaves the question going forward as to just how many people are willing to pay retail price in their local currency for an iPhone.

[onehandle]

15. Apple's iPhone business is worth more than Microsoft and Google combined.

Even with this temporary fluctuation that righted itself later.

[cstanleytech]

18. That might be true but even if it is the question is how long will

that apply for Apple? After all there are a number of Android phones that are as good as the latest iPhones.

[Tab]

22. There's more to Apple than iPhones

For instance, the car technology they're trying to bring to bear to go head to head with Tesla (and Google).

And they have a shitload of cash in the bank (granted, offshore).

[cstanleytech]

38. Its yet to be seen if their involvement with Tesla will pay off as for the cash in the bank.......

they had cash in the bank back in the 80s as well and they still almost managed to go under before they managed to get Jobs back which saved them.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

34. That is entirely at the mercy of the wireless carriers

Carrier subsidies are the only reason the iPhone is a mainstream mass-market product. That was a bargain the wireless carriers were begrudgingly okay with when the smart phone was rapidly growing the higher-margin data business. But that is now a mature market and doesn't require that type of sustenance. We are reaching a tipping point where Apple needs the carriers more than the carriers need the iPhone. That is going to be a very difficult adjustment for Apple to make.

[brooklynite]

16. I bought my shares for an effective price of 65¢...I think I'll hold my positions.

[pbmus]

17. The ny billionaire speaks

[winstars]

19. The Cube fails in 2000 and you buy at $21, it splits by 2 two times later, then by 7 more recently.

A thousand shares, the math is unreal...

Now if you bought at $135 recently, not so great...

[REP]

30. A little higher here, but no panic

Been here before. Just means I'll get more shares when my dividends reinvest.

[olddots]

20. I was a Mac freak till they became a gizmo brand .

Tech stocks are tanking because they become too big to fail .

[Helen Borg]

25. Since Jobs passed away...

Apple has been running on fumes, things that he had set in motion. Now they probably run out of those...

[L. Coyote]

31. Past history, buying Apple when it dips makes you rich!

Wish I had invested $100,000 in Apple long ago.

[WhoWoodaKnew]

32. I bought it for $50/share but sold it soon after. That makes me sick still.

[Yavin4]

37. I heard a story about a guy who was offered Apple shares to help Wozniak and Jobs move the company

out their garage into their new offices. He declined and took cash instead. So, don't feel bad.

[Yavin4]

36. Time to buy.

And buy. And buy. And buy.