Apple Crushed by Other Tech Stocks

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Oct 29, 9:15AM EDT

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Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) stock is trading near its all-time high due to strong iPhone sales and its growing Services business.
Yet it has underperformed most of the other Magnificent 7 stocks this year.

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Apple Crushed by Other Tech Stocks — © PeopleImages / Getty Images

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) stock trades near its all-time high. Its market cap is just under $4 trillion, and during trading yesterday, it briefly reached that number. However, Microsoft Corp.’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) figure jumped over $4 trillion yesterday, and Nvidia Corp.’s (NASDAQ: NVDA) is just shy of $5 trillion.

The fact is, among the seven mega-tech stocks, Apple has underperformed this year, compared to all the others but one.

Apple’s stock is up about 7% this year. Among the Magnificent 7, only Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) has a worse performance, with an increase of 5%. Every other stock on the list is up by mid-double-digits. Nvidia’s advance is nearly 40%, and this leads the group. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) is up close to 30%.

Apple’s modest increase is due to strong iPhone 17 sales. There are reports that these have outpaced the iPhone 16. It appears that in the first 10 days after their releases, the iPhone 17 did better in China and the United States.

It is also reported that Apple’s high-margin Services business is growing rapidly, which would help make up for slow sales of iPads and Macs. What this means is that one strong number is offsetting two weak ones.

Despite strong iPhone sales, negative views about Apple focus on only one thing. It does not have a strong artificial intelligence product, and management says it will not have one until next year. Rumors suggest that Apple has not been able to build a cutting-edge AI version of Siri. That puts its AI product behind those of Microsoft, OpenAI, and Google. Even smaller companies like xAI seem to have better AI products.

Apple’s earnings will have to be unusually strong to offset its mediocre performance this year. And management will need to post a strong forecast for its first true AI product.

Apple Stock Price Prediction and Forecast 2025–2030

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.