AAPL Off As Markets Hemorrhage
The major averages have dropped sharply at the start of the first trading session after Standard & Poor's cut the U.S. from a AAA rating to AA+. The Dow is off ~300 points, and the NASDAQ has lost over 3%. Shares of AAPL are not immune, down close to 3%. Catalysts include the next
iPhone launch this fall as well as a possible
iPad 3 ahead of the holidays; continued adoption in China and other emerging markets;
iCloud rollout and adoption; the continued evolution and next generation of
Apple TV; and new platforms such as books / publishing and social (
Ping). Shares of
Apple trade at
9.8x Enterprise Value / Trailing Twelve Months Free Cash Flow (including long-term marketable securities).
Analyst Raises Price Target On iPhone And iPad Outperformance (AppleInsider) Needham & Company analyst Charlie Wolf upped his price target for Apple stock to $540, with projected sales of 54 million iPads and 108 million iPhones in 2012. So why the big jump? Charlie notes that the firm adjusted how it values Apple's different businesses and product lines. That's up from the previous estimate, based on a new assumption that the
iPad will continue to capture a larger share of the tablet market. The iPad has replaced the
iPod as the tech giant's halo product, buoying sales of other Apple products.
Read » Lower-End iPhone Would Have To Be Innovative And A Category Killer (AppleInsider) After a meeting with two of Apple's top executives,
RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky said the company's primary requirement for launching a lower-end
iPhone is whether the handset would provide an "innovative, category-killer experience". The statement may fall in line with Apple's ethos for all of its products, but is more poignant given reports that Apple would launch a "simplified" iPhone 4 device alongside a new
iPhone 5 smartphone later in the year. Pre-paid phones are used by 72% of mobile subscribers.
Unless Apple makes a pre-paid phone, it's missing out on a huge part of the mobile market.
Read » Apple Behind Amazon, But Ahead Of Google On Forbes Most Innovative List (Forbes) Forbes has put together a list of the World's Most Innovative Companies and Apple ranked 5th.
Salesforce leads the pack, followed by
Amazon, Intuitive Surgical and
Tencent Holdings. Other notable companies:
Google is ranked 7th,
Adobe is ranked 54th, Apple's court friend
HTC is 56th,
Oracle is 77th and
Microsoft, far down on the list, ranked 86th.
Read » Apple Launches Educational iMac At Lower Price Point (Various via iDygest) Apple launched a new, entry-level 21.5-inch
iMac meant specifically for educational institutions and volume-purchase customers priced at $999. Apple and education have always gone hand in hand, from the first Apple IIs gracing libraries across the nation to the countless aging machines now in place at schools everywhere. The iMac will be released later this August.
Read » It's Official, Apple Now King Of The Smartphone Industry As Measured By Hardware (IDC) The smartphone market saw some leadership changes as far as market share is concerned, one of the major ones being
Nokia's fall from first to third place. Apple and
Samsung zoomed to the top of the list of global smartphone makers in the second quarter, blowing past both
Nokia and
Research In Motion, according to research firm IDC. Apple's shipment of over 20 million smartphones and 19.1% international market share makes the company the
king of the smartphone industry.
Read » Russia To Get The iPhone 5 Nearly Immediately After U.S., In November (Bloomberg) The iPhone 5 may start selling in Russia in November, “almost immediately” after sales begin in the U.S., Russian publication RBC Daily reported, citing unidentified handset retailers. Russian cellphone operators are in talks with Apple about speeding up deliveries, as previous iPhone versions were introduced in Russia much later than in the U.S., causing a large volume of unauthorized sales.
Read » Acer Founder Says Tablets Are A Fad (Digitimes) Acer founder Stan Shih has commented that the fad for tablets is a short-term phenomenon. While he commended Apple for thinking outside the box when bringing the iPad to market, he believes PCs will continue to be requisites for businesses and consumers. When asked if Shih believed Acer's upcoming low-cost 7-inch tablet would be a success, he noted that consumers indeed want low-cost options. That "short-term phenomenon" caused Acer to post the worst quarter since 2004 and a 64% dive in net income.
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