Before Apple went mainstream the stock was about $7 and Dell was encouraging "them to shut it all down and give the proceeds to the shareholders".
$7 to $440 is a dream I'd love to have again and again. $7 to $700 was insanity for the naive rationale of the same dream.
There's nothing wrong with mainstream. The issue- IMO- is that the pace of next big thing innovation needed to keep up with expectations of record growth failed. We needed a bona-fide next big thing- not a Mac and not an iDevice or variation thereof- and we didn't get it. As such, the established product mix was not strong enough to keep the slope of growth as steep as it has been... especially projecting forwards from here.
2001: iPod
2007: iPhone (6 years later)
2010: iPad (3 years)
2012: needed next big thing (2 years)
2013-14: needed next, next big thing (1 year)
Else, refine and refine old, next big things and switch from being a growth company to an income (dividend) company. That switch is always required. A company can't rapidly grow every year forever... even Apple.
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Exactly. And those people selling AAPL are not switching to Samsung either.
Nor, does a falling share price = "AAPL is doomed". Apple doesn't even need to sell stock anymore to fund it's business (we fund it by buying Apple stuff hand over fist).
Nor, does it mean Apple products are bad. They just set records for sales of their products. A whole world is buying Apple products at a rapid clip. In some cases Apple can't make enough of them.
It simply means that investors holding AAPL are choosing to not hold it. Maybe they are shifting investments to other companies or maybe they are going to cash. Maybe they are cashing out in anticipation of needing the money to buy the new Apple Television? At some point, the very same investors could all decide that AAPL has hit some kind of bottom and is about to roar again and all flood right back in, which would drive the share price right back up again.
Buyers buying faster than sellers selling generally moves a stock's price up and vice versa. Right now people want to sell more than buyers want to buy. It can't stay that way forever but it can stay that way for quite a bit further from here. Or not.