Stock price doesn't matter. Nokia, Motorola, RIM Blackberry, they all rode the wave and then just as quickly sunk to the bottom. You need customer loyalty. If you want to be the Starbucks of phones, be the Starbucks of phones. But that relies on a carefully crafted "illusion" of being better than everybody else. Starbucks' coffee isn't the best coffee, their IMAGE is the best image of coffee. That's how they charge $5 a cup or whatever. If Apple wants to maintain their luxury appeal to the masses, they can't keep Cook around when he's failed on so many fronts. The design just isn't there anymore...the keyboard fiasco, the battery recall and replacement fiasco...then extending to more devices. It's really sad when all of this is pushed aside because they beefed up prices to temporarily inflate profits. Their situation in China is an absolute mess, they haven't taken hold in the up and coming India market. I don't know. I'm not a psychic - but I feel like plenty of evidence is there that Apple has lost its way on innovation and design.
Remember this all started from one product, the "new" smartphone as imagined by Jobs. As long as Apple has no decent design team, the odds are there that some other company can come and pull the same thing all over again. We are one innovation away from Apple losing tons of market pull...and how can you prevent it, if you have no one at the company with talent or insight to design new things? It's whatever. I can see the writing on the wall but as long as profits are sky high apparently that means there is nothing to be done. *shrug* What a weird belief to hold...
