Fools and their money.
Apple will exit 2011 on top of every other company in the S&P.
Apple's share price has dropped over 5 per cent in after hours trading, following the news that Steve Jobs has resigned as CEO. The company released a statement announcing Jobs's resignation at about 3:30pm Pacific, after the markets had closed in New York, and as of 5pm Pacific, Apple's share price had fallen from 376.18 to …
..........what the reception to the iPhone5 is like. Anything significantly less than the sales of the equivalent period after launch of the iPhone4 then the market who are well aware that Steve Jobs has not been in the best of form for some time now make very well mark the shares down by year's end. That does not necessarily make such a reaction rational or logical but I would not bet against some "post-Jobs" profit taking over the coming months - especially since the stripy-shirted numb-nuts on the exchanges frequently oscillate between excessive optimism and the opposite.
> We'll see a more open Apple when Rev. Jobs leaves entirely.
I'm not so sure...
> He takes me as much of a control freak.
Well, that's because he is. But that's the least of my worries.
What concerns me is that there *appears* to be a correlation between Jobs being away from the helm and Apple suing the crap out of world+dog over bogus patents.
If my belief is correct - and I've done precious little to check - then Jobs stepping down might mean that Apple stays in super-litigious mode. And that's a bad thing for everyone (including Apple, in the longer term).
Vic.
So now who is going to convince people that their overpriced, under-featured devices are worth it? Who is going to explain away missing features as unnecessary only to tout them as the greatest thing since sliced bread when they finally make it into the product years later.
@Anonymous Coward: The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.
> So now who is going to convince people that their overpriced, under-featured devices are worth it? Who is going to explain away missing features as unnecessary only to tout them as the greatest thing since sliced bread when they finally make it into the product years ..
If that is the case then how do you explain Apples current market valuation and what missing features would that be?
http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=466906
Sure as the AC posted, they tend to eventually fix these lack of features, but for first couple i-phones there was no ability to cut and paste, I found this unbelievable that people would buy a "smartphone" that was that stupid.
The lack of being able to display flash animation (which yes, a lot of sites still use) is also unacceptable and makes the Ipad/ipod losers in my book. They have yet to fix this "feature".
Oh and there's the shitty quality lens/camera in the ipad (for a device so expensive it should have better quality camera)
As far as current market valuation.... well crack and cocaine are still selling..well like crack and cocaine (very well apparently), but that doesn't make them good, and doesn't make the people buying them necessarily smart either. $ valuation /= actual value or worth. There is also a crap load of idiots that watch Fox news every night (for the news and not just laughs). Just because they have the most viewers doesn't mean they have the best news program, or that their viewer aren't made dumber for having watched their "news".
Any time a company "appears" to have ownership of a market (like Ipod/iphone/ipad) appeared to have to some people.. then they want to get a piece of the gravy train. However now that Apple I-phone adoption has drastically slowed, and android has taken off and is (well selling like crack it seems) the suits on wallstreet will change their tune and soon will be advising people to buy Google, (or Gold, or whatever is "hot" that day.)
Stock traders are gamblers. With the exception of when a single individual or group attempts to purchase enough of a share of a company to take control of it, a stock has no value other than the perceived value. The activity of the company which issued the shared is sometimes used as the premise for setting prices at which a person is willing to sell a share or alternatively another person would consider buying the share, but the activities of the company itself have no direct effect on the share itself. It's like how placing a bet on a horse on a track will not impact how the horse runs.
The value of the share itself also has absolutely no impact directly on the company. Meaning that if tomorrow the Apple share were worth $0 and all the idiot gamblers.. I mean investors would go bankrupt, but Apple would continue business as usual... probably making more money than ever before.... except many of the people who went bankrupt can't afford iPhone 5 anymore.
We really need to stop supporting, publicizing and/or glorifying the activities of these professional gamblers who have little credentials other than the more successful ones have managed to win more money gambling other peoples live savings than they have lost so far. They don't understand much of anything and have limited mental capacity and still, we keep valuing companies based on their misconceptions of their value. I'm all for a free market and such... but we place too much importance on these gambling idiots.
The previous poster's comments are not *entirely* without merit since Apple's capacities to defend themselves against hostile takeovers, borrow money or carry out a takeover themselves would only be significantly affected if their share price dropped by a very large percentage indeed. This applies to any well managed and strongly capitalised company where "normal factors/circumstances" apply.
More likely that Apple lost the key ruling against Samsung, where 9 out the 10 patent judgements were deemed to be invalid, and the only one that was potentially valid is not really that significant.
I think alot of people see the writing on the wall for Apple, including Jobs, hence his timely standing down.
>In his new role as Chairman of the Board, Steve will continue to serve Apple with his unique insights, creativity and inspiration.<
Quote from Ars Technica
Damn, so still no Flash, and I missed out on the HP Touchpad firesale (did that even really happen?) - still n all, the Lenovo Thinkpad looks quite nice with pen and finger input - also has an SD slot which I consider quite important.
I'm sure there’s no connection with that or the fact the court cases and patents seem to be turning against Apple - even if the press seems to think a loss is really a win.
I wish him a happy retirement but without patents and frivolous lawsuits to beat the competition I'd recommend shorting Apple shares by the barrel load.
When he found out about Steve resigning, he said, and was quoted in the San Jose Mercury News as saying:
"He always wanted to get technology out of the way for people to get answers in their lives.I could never do it as well, but I always wanted to. He wasn't one day ahead of everyone else, he was 10 years ahead of everyone else."
It's been noted in the press that when Steve was "on leave of absence", he frequently participated in strategy and frequently called executives. He's already got Apple's next ten years planned out. As long as he's still alive (and Chairman of the Board), you can bet no Apple product will go out the door without his approval.
btw, there's apparently some evidence of the lawsuits increasing when he was out of the office.
"I wish him a happy retirement but without patents and frivolous lawsuits to beat the competition I'd recommend shorting Apple shares by the barrel load."
If their products were not so good other people would not just copy them (Android, Samsung etc.).
Apple is not just one man - of course it's a loss but they will continue just fine. A 5% drop in the stock price is just a knee-jerk reaction and a good opportunity to buy at a discount - you can be pretty sure they will be north of $400 a share once the iPhone 5 launches.
Apple has already passed Exxon again to re-take the top of the S&P 500 as of now, and it hasn't even been 48 hours since I wrote that original comment. That crash didn't last long. A lot of people just found their "great time" to get into AAPL, is all this was.
http://247wallst.com/page/real-time-500/
They'll trade back and forth for a while, but by year end the race will be over and Apple will be solidly ahead.