So as many of you know, the stock market is not good right now. In fact, yesterday, it dropped over 600 points. One of the biggest victims of this slide is Apple. But it’s not because of this US vs. China trade war. Apple stocks sink. The reason may surprise you.
The reason Apple stocks sink is because of a US Supreme Court ruling. That ruling said that you the Apple customer and app developers can sue the IT service conglomerate over high prices. Stockholders didn’t like that at all. In fact, Monday May 13 alone, Apple stocks dropped over 6%. The plaintiffs complained of Apple’s monopoly over the apps. They also complained about the 30% Apple takes from app sales, and the absolute control of the apps.
The plaintiffs don’t win any money or material value…yet. All this victory does is say they have a right to sue. The vote was 5-4 against Apple. The court ruled consumers are buying the app right from the Apple Store. Therefore, they have the right to sue Apple under antitrust laws. But in a statement, Apple spokespeople insists they are not a monopoly. Then, the statement says the majority of their apps are free, and the app distributor determines the price on the rest of them. In other words, they hardly get any revenue from apps.
Then why do they fight so hard in this lawsuit if they’re not making revenue? They already make billions upon billions on sales, repairs, software and other things. Apple should have settled out of court. It was a bad move to continue with a very public lawsuit. I think this makes Apple look like the big, bad, greedy mega-company. A mega-corporation that’s robbing the little guy, the app developer, of his/her royalties. Is that why stocks are suffering because of this? Is it because the shareholders don’t like this image of Apple? Today’s ticker says Apple is trying to make a comeback. Will they?