As a shareholder in Apple I don't like how Apple handles these bonuses.
The right way would be that Apple used its cash and bought these shares and gave as bonus.
HTC did the right thing: They used their profits to buy 5% of its own shares. 50% of them they destroyed and 50% for bonuses.
This way both share holders and the bonus takers make a profit.
Now Apple just dilute the share = my shares are less worth.
(An if Apple believes in them self, they should buy loads of share at this low price today. Trailing PE of 10 is insane for a company like Apple. Amazon has about 100 PE. )
So you think Apple should have a stock price that reflects a PE ratio of 100!?
In that case, the stock price would be
$2,526.00 as of their EPS today at 17h12 (GMT -1h).
Moreover, by issuing more stock, their earnings per share would actually go down which would make their PE ratio go up. So which one do you want?
Also, Amazon and Apple aren't exactly in the same industry, so you shouldn't be comparing their P/Es anyway. But what's hard is comparing them to any company, because they have no direct competitors on all fronts, you know? But let's look at some simply comparisons in the way of P/E:
HP: 5.72
Dell: 7.63
Microsoft: 9.55
RIM: 4.81
Nokia: 13.27
Again, it's kind of hard to say where Apple should fall in this category, but even if you include Google in your stats (P/E 18.93), it's no where near 100 P/E. Apple is in a relatively mature industry - low P/Es are expected in mature industries. I think their P/E is right around where it needs to be.
Basically...I guess I wouldn't buy Amazon. I mean, surely you can look at those numbers and see how crazy that is: Amazon's share price is $210.00, yet they're only earning $2.27 on each share? I know they're supposed to come out with a tablet and have proven their business model, but my god...that just seems insane.
I will agree with you on one thing: stock buybacks are good for pretty much everyone, especially when you can do so with cash (unless your company is small and you need to issue debt for protection of being taken over, in which case that can advantageous...but that's another story). But at this point...Apple's such a solid stock, they can do whatever the Hell they want.