“Apple Inc.’s price target was cut to $420 from $500 by analysts at Jefferies due to slower sales growth in the first quarter,” Sital S. Patel reports for MarketWatch. “Jefferies has a hold rating on the stock.”
“The firm cut its revenue forecast for Apple to $41 billion in the first quarter and sees a 25% probability the firm will miss guidance due to sales slowing even more after Samsung’s Galaxy S4 launch on Thursday,” Patel reports. “Apple shares were down 0.7% in premarket trading.”
Brief article in full here.
MacDailyNews Take: Can’t have yesterday’s late rally continue. It’s not time for that, yet. Conscious or not, that’s what this type of bandwagon hopping infers.
Why NOT cut to 0.00425 USD per share? I want more.
What are they smoking over there?
My price targets are:
400.00
500.00
600.00
700.00
800.00
900.00
I be Analcyst
First quarter fiscal or calendar? Come on AAPL, blow this dude out of his saddle.
The first quarter has already passed for Apple. Their fiscal year ended in September. Can anyone grasp the iPhone and iPad sales jump if Apple removed the camera and added the finger print security for some iOS devices. There are many government and companies that will not let recording equipment into the building. Also, iPads for e-books for schools do not require cameras.
Sometimes less is more!
I realize Apple’s year, but does the author of the article?
What’s he smoking?
Price targets for Apple don’t matter. I’m sure that’s already been proven by Brian White’s ridiculously high price targets. Just as they down, they can go up. One year price targets are a thing of the past for Apple. The best they can do is quarterly price targets with the company.
Tomorrow is supposedly the beginning of the death of the iPhone now that the Galaxy S4 is being introduced. iPhone commoditization is upon us. Metal is out, plastic is in. Small displays are out, huge displays are in. If Apple can’t or won’t react fast enough to the consumers’ needs then Apple will just fall behind. I’m not saying Apple has made a mistake, I’m only saying if. I don’t think it’s been proven that most consumers want super-sized smartphones, but Wall Street believes they do. I hope Apple will be able to prove them wrong.
Samsung is just too powerful a company for Apple. They’re willing to do everything in order to gain market share and Apple isn’t. Smartphones have become a sales numbers war and it’s basically killing Wall Street’s expectations about Apple’s survival and Apple’s share price will continue to fall. Because Apple refuses to play a market share war, I honestly don’t see how Apple can hold up its share price. I don’t think Apple should play a sales numbers war so I’ll have to settle for dividends.
Samsung will certainly find it difficult to make profits selling at every price point to gain market share, but it will make Apple look bad in Wall Street’s eyes and Apple’s share price will continue to drop even though Apple will remain a profitable company.
Market share is certainly quite important; if you have a negligible share of the market, developers won’t bother (see Windows 8, Palm Pre, BlackBerry…). This is why Android’s app market is catching up to iOS App store.
However, clearly, market share is NOT the one single and ultimate factor for developers. It is clear that even with a smaller market share than Android, Apple’s users are spending more money on apps, spending more time using those apps, downloading more apps, and as such are much more attractive market segment than Android. Let us not forget that the ratio of paid vs. free apps is significantly higher on iOS then on Android (where vast majority of users only have free apps and no paid ones).
With such disparity between the two market segments, Apple will be able to sustain a very healthy and solid user base for a long time going forward. That user base will continue to generate major profits, which will continue to represent majority of wireless industry.
Android may have a billion activations per year, but those are no more meaningful than all those billions of cheap, dumb-phone Nokias that are flooding the developing world.
Ultimately, Wall Street cares about profit margins and profit growth. If the two show solid growth (most importantly, at or above the Street’s expectations), so will AAPL.
Any dev worth their salt will not go for market share. They want to be paid and Android users don’t pay for apps nearly as much as iOS users. Check you facts, they have been posted on this and many sites for a long time.
This is EXACTLY what I had said in my post. There is a reason why Apple’s iOS, with a smaller market share, attracts more, and better quality developers. In fact, many reasons (the ones I had already mentioned in my posting above).
You’re right. I guess I didn’t need to support your statement. Sorry.
LB loves to troll, don’t play with her.
All I can say, Predrag, is that you are no Laughing_Boy48…and that is a good thing. Your post is rational.
Laughing_Boy48 seems to have bought into the single dominant company mentality based on market share. He is blinded to the fact that most industries have at least several healthy companies in competition. You don’t have to own a dominant market share to be successful. It is far better to have a smaller, but more loyal market share. Apple is selling tens of millions of devices every quarter and that is plenty to maintain a vibrant, growing, and evolving ecosystem.
And the trump card…Apple dominates the profits. Who’s laughing now, Laughing_Boy48?
@Predrag: “This is why Android’s app market is catching up to iOS App store.”
It is *not* catching up. According to http://www.appbrain.com/stats/number-of-android-apps there are approximately 508,000 proper applications for Android vs. 807,000 iOS apps http://148apps.biz/app-store-metrics/
Well, catching up is not a state; it is a process. If you plot the two lines over each other (number of apps over time, iOS and Android), you’ll se that the gap has been narrowing for quite some time. In other words, Android apps numbers are growing just a bit faster than iOS. There is ways to go for Android before it does catch up, but there is no doubt, Android app market IS slowly catching up to iOS app store.
The screen size thing puzzles me somewhat – a colleague demo’d his Galaxy and it was huuuge… far too big for my shirt pocket anyway.
Seems a bit like so many electronic gizmos on cars – the headline value is there, but practicality often zilch.
I’d get excited with some iPod-style colourways, mind.
for comparison, some facts from last quarter:
Amazon reported 22% revenue growth year over year (and no profits),
Google reported 21% revenue growth yoy (excluding loss leader Motorola and its decreasing revenue),
Apple reported 27% growth in weekly revenue, year over year.
Just saw Peter Misak cut his price on Apple. In the interview he blamed the lack of a large phone for most of Apple’s problems. Especially considering that it probably won’t come until the middle of next year. Apple is losing a lot of sales due to this issue. He had been a strong supporter of Apple. Admitted that he made a huge mistake by not recommending investors sell last September. There are concerns that Apple may not even meet their own forecast for this quarter and the next quarter may be even worse. We should know in about four weeks how this quarter turned out. Things aren’t looking good. And you can’t blame the analysts for everything.
We will see, GM. Just hold on to your gains and let AAPL go back up.
Gains? I sold AAPl at $700 last September. My gains have been working elsewhere for 5 1/2 months! PCLN,GOOG,YHOO,UTX and a few others. Its been a very profitable time for me with the market overall doing so Well. Goodness! You did sell then too didn’t you?
he might be right on screen size, I saw a lot of young professionals
in Asia and China using the S3. Screen size may not matter much here in the US but over there it’s new, trendy and cool.
OK, the stock dividend now pays more than twice what a bank CD does by %. NEVER MIND the $130 billion cash, or the Best Quarter Ever last time. OKay, when, if ever does the logic kick in? $200/share? $100? Maybe the hedge fund propaganda will stop when Apple pays YOU to buy a share….never seen anything so damned ridiculous. Where’s all this Wall Street Reform, anyway?