Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) shares closed Friday evening at $509.19 down 0.08%, but it seems that consumer demand for Apple products may not have declined alongside the stock’s current devaluation and slump to as steep a degree as analysts assume. Though figures from this holiday season’s sales have yet to roll in, it’s expected that they’ll still be fairly healthy.
CNN Money also reported Friday that though Wall Street Analysts believe that figures compared to 2011 sales will be a “tough compare.” They’re still up 28 percent for the iPhone and 48 percent for the iPad year over year and CNN claims that a study by Distmo shows downloads on Apple’s App Store have increased 87 percent year over year. Another factor this report includes is that of ad impressions. It purports that 87 percent of total tablet web traffic is generated by an iPad.
But it’s also fair to say that even though app demand and ad revenue is higher for Apple Inc. than its competitors, device sales may not have grown on a large enough curve to be worth Apple’s while—even if demand for the devices is high enough for Mayor Bloomberg to come out last week and blame Apple for recent increased numbers in New York City’s annual crime index.
Sales of devices, ad revenue and apps seem to have done nothing at present to save the stock’s trading price immediately because issues of greater importance have taken precedence. Competition from Android devices, the fiscal cliff and less innovation continue to stymie Apple’s potential growth.
But other issues that may be contributing to the decline of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) according to Forbes at least, are over analyzing the current of situation of decline and expectations that have been too high. Citing Chinese reports for high enough demand for the iPhone 5 to be produced by Foxconn and Flexium Interconnect over the Chinese New Year, this situation may be a reliable indicator that demand for the iPhone 5 should at least keep even of that with the 4s and may stand to become the fastest selling smartphone of all time.
And even though it’s true that most apps downloaded are Apple’s, reported customer satisfaction with online sales is not a metric which Apple currently dominates. Amazon dominates in this area according to ForeSee’s annual Holiday E-Retailer Satisfaction Index scoring 88 to Apple’s 80, which puts it below tenth place and is a three point drop from its 2011 score.
In the ongoing front of lawsuit wars among smartphone makers, it was also announced that Apple will drop its patent claim against the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini provided that the South Korean manufacturer does not plan to introduce the item to U.S. markets.
In less substantiated news, Friday’s rumor mill supposes that the MacBook Air redesign will have a new chip platform based on a fourth-generation core “Haswell” processor which Intel plans to introduce in January. The benefit from this tweak would be better battery life in the same or a thinner design.