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Apple has shed the equivalent of a Google or a Microsoft since September

Image Credit: Google Finance

AAPLApple stock has been hammered today, dropping almost 6 percent (or $25/share), as investors are taking cues from an important Apple component supplier, Cirrus Logic, which forecast lower-than-expected sales of its chips for the iPhone and iPad in the coming quarter.

That means that Exxon Mobile, with a $385.7 billion-dollar market capitalization, is currently the most valuable company in the world.

Cirrus Logic, however, did put a positive spin on the situation, saying that the decrease was due to a key customer’s migration to a new component. “A key customer,” investors believe, is code for Apple, and the component decreases are evidence that iPad shipments dropped in recent months.

The new drop means that Apple is now more than $300/share down from its high point in September 2012, when the company was worth over $650 billion. And that it has now dropped an absolutely massive $250 billion in value since then — the equivalent of an entire Google or a Microsoft.

Apple’s quarterly results are coming Tuesday, and the company better hope Tim Cook has something that impresses investors. His last effort, a Wall Street “fireside chat” at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet conference in February, fell flat, with Apple stock dropping a further $11/share, or 2.3 percent.

Because if not, the kind of investor revolt that we saw in February led by Greenlight Capital could become the norm, not the exception.

Even if level-headed investors say Apple’s fundamentals are all good.

Image credit: Google Finance

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