Apple Shareholders Should Brace for 20% Share Plunge

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jul 4, 4:21PM EDT · Published Jul 4, 4:50AM EDT

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Apple Shareholders Should Brace for 20% Share Plunge — © Apple Inc.. Paris (CC BY 2.0) by sabin paul croce

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Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) stock could experience another 20% reset.

No one believes a stock that has traded as strongly as Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) could experience a 20% reset. Think again. It happened in the past year. Apple traded at $194 in January and dropped to $164 in May, 84% of that high. Owners are on edge now. Apple announces earnings in less than a month. It must show that iPhone sales did not fall sharply ahead of the iPhone 16 launch in September and the release of what has been vaguely described as their new AI products. Apple is still the world’s most valuable brand.

Apple has given investors the taste of a bad quarter. Revenue ticked down 4% in the most recent quarter to $91 billion, insufficient to cause a selloff. However, the weakness of iPhone sales and Greater China revenue started showing worrying trends. iPhone revenue dropped from $51.3 billion in the quarter a year ago to $45.0 billion. Greater China’s revenue slipped from $17.8 billion to $16.3 billion.

The anxiety about China was that it is the largest smartphone market in the world by far. The worry about the iPhone is that its high price and lack of upgraded features from the iPhone 14 may not be enough to keep costumes on board. China’s market is exceptionally competitive because local smartphone manufacturers like Oppo and Vivo are popular.

Because Apple’s new product will be introduced well after the next quarterly announcement, Apple’s investors will need to sift through regional and iPhone sales. The iPad, Mac, and Services revenue won’t compensate for a big iPhone dip. The Chinese market sales are sometimes based on erroneous figures from third parties. Usually, Apple comments about its next quarter on earnings calls.

Apple’s shares have taken a beating this year and then recovered. The beating part could happen again.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.