The financial world was shocked when Apple lost the top spot last week to Exxon and had its stock drop dramatically. Everyone seems to have a different opinion of why this happened. Is Apple losing its luster or is this just the result of rumors that got out of control?
The following is an excerpt of Steve Hughes’ article and impressions on what brought Apple down. It will appear in tomorrow’s issue of TechLife News in the iOS Newsstand and AppleMagazine digital magazine at Zinio.
Apple may actually be a victim of its own success. Since visionary and former CEO Steve Job’s introduction of the iPod in 2001, the company’s rather cautious projections have been regularly trounced by astonishing earnings—sometimes by as much as billions of dollars. In a sense, Apple was and has been a blue chip corporation that has consistently put up almost obscenely high profits that are more akin to hot-shot start-ups. After 12 years and an impressive number of innovative and revolutionary consumer devices, investors have come to anticipate results that may no longer be attainable after an unprecedented 12 year run. The confusion over the future direction of the stock market has Wall Street scratching its collective head. Tech analysts remain divided on mid to long-term prospects for the stock price with some submitting that it’s bound to reach the elusive $1,000 mark by year-end and others bearishly predicting prices somewhere below $300. That’s an astonishing gap not often seen in analyses of large cap enterprises, and points to less enthusiastic prospects for the kind of growth investors have become accustomed to.
Getting an accurate read on Apple’s financial prospects has always been thorny with the level of secrecy the company has traditionally maintained regarding products and supplies, as analysts are often as much in the dark about products as consumers until their imminent launch date. However, under Tim Cook’s stewardship, that intensity of confidentiality has doubled, making it even tougher to precisely gauge the track of the company. Though the tech titan has not always been impervious to leaks of design aspects or specs, the only true assertion can be made after a product’s introduction to the market place.
Find out if Steve thinks Apple can recover from this deficit by reading the full article in tomorrow’s Apple Magazine and TechLife News.