Love the picture!
I can't stand investors and analysts. A company can't grow into perpetuity. They want year over year revenue and market growth forever. That isn't sustainable. I think $9 Billion is pretty incredible.
Of course, eternal growth of no company is sustainable in a finite world. However, investors don't care about such rules. They dump the company that can't sustain growth and move on to another company than can. There are plenty of other major tech companies to move on to. Both Amazon and Alphabet can sustain growth and now so can Microsoft and that's where the investors are going. The thing is, Tim Cook and Apple had been warned for a long time about depending upon only iPhone sales. Apple has had the means or the cash to get into other businesses. No one at Apple is willing to take any risk so they keep doing the same thing over and over.
Apple had as much of an opportunity or better to establish a powerful cloud computing business as any of the other major tech companies. Apple could have also purchased DuckDuckGo and tried to go head-to-head with Google's search/ad business and also build a knowledge engine for Siri. Why should Apple leave Alphabet a clear field when Alphabet is basically crippling Apple's iPhone business with Android and also offering competitive smartphones, too. Apple's management is just stupid or blind to allow a company to steal their lunch and then do nothing about stealing it back. AppleWatch is not even close to being a multi-billion dollar long-term cloud computing business. Everyone on Wall Street knew AppleWatch would quickly fail from the very beginning. It's growth has already stopped and is in decline.
Do I think I could run Apple better than it is being run? Absolutely not. I only see what other major tech companies are doing to keep growing their revenue. It just makes sense if a company has a means to grow then why not pursue it instead of simply coasting like Apple is doing. I realize Apple's mountain of cash is stuck overseas but it's possible Apple put too much emphasis on stock buybacks instead of acquisitions. This I'm saying in hindsight and I also have no idea of what Apple's end goals are. I'm just saying that when a company like Microsoft is more than managing its Windows sales slowdown and the complete collapse of its mobile business and yet Wall Street sees more prospects in Microsoft than Apple, then something is definitely wrong.
I do know that all the other major tech companies will be posting decent share gains on earnings and only Apple's share price will be declining. It's becoming a theme for Tim Cook and Apple. It's something shareholders are almost expecting every quarter and it's quite disappointing.