“The question has been asked by nearly every Apple watcher following a brutal two-week stretch that began with a worse than expected earnings report, quickened after the ouster of a high-profile executive and culminated with news this week that it had fallen behind competitor Samsung in the smartphone wars,” Javier E. David writes for CNBC.
“For a company that could seemingly do no wrong up until a few short weeks ago, Apple’s dramatic reversal of fortune has jarred numerous analysts,” David writes. “Given that the company’s successful updates to its wildly popular iPhone and iPad, Apple seemed poised to dominate that [sic] digital wars that pitted it against competitors like Google and Samsung Electronics.”
MacDailyNews Take: We live in a bizarro universe where fiction if stated as if it’s fact and shorts and trolls abound. Apple isn’t poised to dominate the “digital wars,” they dominate them. Apple reaps the vast bulk of the smartphone industries profits. Google and their minions can give away as free phones as they can make, but market share doesn’t equal profit share. It never has and it never will. That’s why Apple’s Macs are still here, and why Macintosh has outgrown the Windows PC market as a whole for the last six years, after having been pronounced “dead” at least bi-weekly since 1984.
David writes, “Apple’s cratering stock price – which hit an all-time high above $700 as early as September – has become a proxy for what some investors think is a declining outlook ahead of the all-important holiday shopping season.”
MacDailyNews Take: No investor with a brain thinks that, and the rest are shorting the stock.
David writes, “In late October, Apple unfurled its fifth version of the iPhone, nearly a year after the unexpected demise of iconic CEO Steve Jobs.”
MacDailyNews Take: As “unexpected” as it could be after roughly 38,000 articles attempting to estimate his time left on earth during his last several years on it. Most were written in attempts to drive down the stock price. When Steve died, a little piece of the shorts did, too.
David writes, “Simultaneously, newly installed CEO Tim Cook wowed market participants with a mini version of its market beating iPad that sold three million units immediately out of the gate. In theory, the company should be riding high… Douglas Kass, founder of fund manager Seabreeze Partners, told CNBC last week that the company is no longer a buy and that Apple’s golden age is over. With the stock looking increasingly vulnerable, Kass said, ‘Some of its competitors are growing agile and Apple is losing its first-mover advantage.'”
MacDailyNews Take: That’s the best you’ve got, Dougie Shorty McShort?
How’s Dougie’s history with Apple predictions?
…Notwithstanding the previous successes of the Mac and iPod, there seem to be enough questions regarding the iPhone (is it really differentiated from products already on the market that have advanced features, strong operating systems, have penetrated enterprise and rely on email as their killer application?) — especially in light of the market’s starry-eyed reaction and Apple’s surge in value… – Doug Kass, January 16, 2007
On that day, Apple shares closed at $97.10. Since its release in June 2007, iPhone has only transformed the mobile device industry, demolished those who “penetrated enterprise and rely on email as their killer application,” and sold over 200 million units to date while reaping the bulk of the smartphone industry’s profits, it has propelled Apple Inc. into the most valuable public company in world history.
David writes, “On Thursday, research firm Strategy Analytics said Samsung’s Galaxy S3 had surpassed the iPhone as the world’s bestselling smartphone model. The news heaped more pressure on Apple’s already beleaguered stock.”
MacDailyNews Take: Oh, wow. You mean some other firm (one that directly copies Apple, by the way) manages to move more units -via unending Buy One, Get X Number Free promos – during the annual iPhone model change pause? Wow, again. Like it’s never happened before. It has. In theory, this bearshit should never work, since we can see what’s been said before and also what happened following it. Luckily for the shorts, many people are idiots with the attention span of gnats. It’s amazing these people had any money to put into AAPL in the first place.
David writes, “‘Samsung’s Galaxy S3 has proven wildly popular with consumers and operators across North America, Europe and Asia,’ said analyst Neil Mawston, adding the new iPhone 5 would likely reclaim the top spot for Apple in the current quarter.”
MacDailyNews Take: “The new iPhone 5 [will] likely reclaim the top spot for Apple in the current quarter.” Gee, ya think?
David writes, “Apple’s mounting woes have made some warn that the company could face a similar fog of irrelevance that is shrouding both Microsoft and Yahoo! – both companies that, once upon a time, enjoyed dominant market share before falling from grace into an extended period of decline.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s enough to inspire us to ruin a classic song. Here’s a bit of “Manipulation” (sung to the music of “Anticipation” by Carly Simon):
Manipulation, manipulation
Is makin’ dupes sell
Is keepin’ us rich(These are the good old days)
And stay right here ’cause these are the good old days
(These are the good old days)
(These are the good old days)
(These are the good old days)
(These are…..the good old days)Wall Street is a game. Play it well (and don’t look gift horses in the mouth.)
By the way, we wrote the take above on September 26, 2011, during the last attempt to beat down Apple shares before the end of the year. Yes, we’ve seen this many times before and we expect we’ll see it many times again in the future.
In closing:
What’s important when you are in that hedge fund mode is to not do anything remotely truthful, because the truth is so against your view, that it’s important to create a new truth, to develop a fiction. – Jim Cramer, explaining how hedge-fund managers game the stock market, 2006
