Billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn took to his official Twitter account on Wednesday to reveal that he has purchased $500 million more shares of Apple stock in the last two weeks, and called his continued investment in the company a "no brainer."
Last fall's introduction of the iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina display may have helped sales of Apple's tablets achieve double-digit year-over-year gains, according to pre-earnings expectations from Wall Street.
With Apple set to report first quarter financial results next week, many Cupertino-watching analysts are predicting the company to have sold a record number of iPhones during the 3-month period that ended late December.
With the iPhone just days away from arriving on China Mobile, analysts' relief at the long-rumored deal's consummation is paired with curiosity about what concessions Apple may have made to strike an accord with the world's largest wireless carrier.
Total iOS device sales may have reached 80 million units in the just-concluded December quarter, driven by particularly strong demand for the new iPhone 5s and iPad Air, sales surveys conducted by Canaccord Genuity suggest.
When Apple reports its holiday 2013 earnings in a few weeks, investors are likely to be focused on the future, analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray believes, as the upcoming launch of the iPhone on China Mobile takes center stage.
While research firms Gartner and IDC have very different projections on how Apple's Mac lineup performed in the holiday quarter, both sides can agree on one thing: PC shipments continued to shrink over the holidays, as consumers once again opted for tablets over traditional computers.
It would be "impossible" for Apple to successfully build a cheap iPhone without doing lasting damage to the company's highly profitable and successful smartphone brand, analyst Charlie Wolf of Needham & Company believes.
Investors place too great an emphasis on Apple's total iPhone unit sales every quarter, without giving enough consideration to the company's transition to greater monetization of its unique ecosystem of services, one analyst believes.
Apple on Monday announced that it will reveal results for its first fiscal quarter of 2014 on Jan. 27, which will be followed by an earnings conference call expected to cover holiday season sales performance and more concrete numbers for the iPhone 5s and 5c, as well as the iPad Air and Retina iPad mini.
Activist investor Carl Icahn, who has a history of using his money and power to influence publicly traded companies and most recently made Apple one of his targets, is now setting his sights on Hertz, buying as many as 40 million shares in the rental car company.
A pair of Wall Street analysts have come to very different conclusions on Apple stock for the start of 2014, as Brian White of Cantor Fitzgerald gave an enthusiastic recommendation for the iPhone maker, while Maynard Um of Wells Fargo downgraded AAPL shares from "outperform" to the status of "market perform."
Apple on Friday posted its preliminary proxy statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which included, among other operating necessities, details of a $50 billion stock repurchase proposal submitted by Carl Icahn.
Shares of Apple stock surged more than 3 percent on Monday, after news broke that the company has reached a long-awaited deal to begin selling the iPhone in January through China Mobile, the world's largest wireless provider.
A pair of negative news bites related to Apple hit on Wednesday, potentially explaining why shares of the company dipped nearly 2 percent in morning trading.
As shares of Apple continue to trade higher, Evercore Partners on Friday upped its price target for AAPL stock to $700, citing what the firm called "rejuvenated momentum" seen from recent iPhone and iPad product refreshes.
Apple's initial public offering on December 12, 1980 sold 4.6 million shares at $22 each, generating more capital than any other iPO since Ford Motor Company in 1956 and instantly creating 300 millionaires.
Apple continues to dominate smartphone sales with their flagship iPhone 5s and mid-range iPhone 5c as the handsets took two of the top three sales slots at every major U.S. wireless carrier for the third month in a row.
Billionaire investor and financial activist Carl Icahn has filed a shareholder proposal with Apple, seeking support for spending even more of the company's cash reserves on its own shares.
Despite reaching a new peak share price for 2013 that pushed Apple's market capitalization above $500 billion, the company's valuation remains where it was in the spring of 2012, at a time when analysts were predicting Apple's market cap would soon double.
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Neil Hughes
Shane Cole
AppleInsider Staff
Mikey Campbell
Daniel Eran Dilger
