Posted on 04/18/2013 12:51:30 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Apple may be the world’s most celebrated electronics company, but its formerly high-flying stock price has plummeted to Earth over the past six months, declining 40% since last September. On Wednesday, that trend continued when Apple shares tumbled 5.5%, briefly pulling company shares below $400 for the first time since December 2011, and wiping out more than $20 billion in shareholder value.
Wednesday’s decline was apparently triggered by a disappointing sales forecast from one of the company’s key suppliers, which fueled fears of weakening demand for Apple’s signature iPhone and iPad products — and added to growing concern about a weakening global electronics market. Apple’s dramatic stock slide has cost the company the title of the world’s largest company by market capitalization, a distinction that once again belongs to energy giant Exxon Mobil.
The question now is whether Apple shares are likely to keep falling. Apple, which reports earnings results next Tuesday, is now trading at slightly more than nine times earnings making it extremely cheap relative to the broader market. Even so, many analysts are cautioning that the stock could fall further still — with some pulling out the classic warning that investors shouldn’t attempt to “catch a falling knife.” Or, as Auerbach Grayson analyst Richard Ross told Forbes: “Until this stock can show me something, there’s no reason to be a hero.”
Apple had already been facing growing competition from the likes of Google and South Korean electronics titan Samsung, weighing down Apple’s stock price in recent months as investors wait for the company’s next breakthrough product. Then, on Tuesday, Cirrus Logic, which supplies Apple with audio chips for the iPhone and iPad, warned of “a decreased forecast for a high-volume product” from one specific customer.
(Excerpt) Read more at business.time.com ...
Actually if you compare Craftsman and Husky side by side they look almost identical, so Kobalt is your only other reasonably priced alternative if you want to avoid Craftsman.
What? Android is kicking what stuffing out of Apple? That just doesn't agree with the facts. Apple OWNS 72% of ALL mobile phone profits. . . not Android. The Street is reporting today that iPhone sales at Verizon are UP 25% year-over-year compared to same quarter last year on sales of FOUR MILLION iPhones in the quarter, and that is just one carrier in the US. In fact, 55% of all phones sold by Verizon last quarter were Apple iPhones! That's really getting the stuffing kicked. . . but it's not Apple getting kicked.
Now for Linux. . . Windows PCs have DROPPED market share BY awhopping 14% but Apple Macs, during the same quarter, INCREASED market share by 7%! It was reported last week that Apple rakes in 45% of ALL profits of all PC sales. That's another drubbing that just isn't happening. Strange that the stock market just ignore this, isn't it? Linux? It has never reached better than about 1.6% of the market. . . But it's proponents keep saying "Once they get Linux to the point where it's ready for primetime no one will want Windows or a Mac again" over and over, again and again, for the last ten years or so. They say that doing the same thing, over and over, expecting a different outcome, is a good definition of insanity. . . Linux is a good Geek's OS, but it will never be mainstream. No one is going to push it unless there is a profit to be made.
Yes, Linux is in a lot of things. . . but does Apple WANT or need to be in those things? Nope.
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