You say this as if it means Apple has done something wrong, or that they've somehow underperformed. The fact is this: they issued guidance for their profits for

You say this as if it means Apple has done something wrong, or that they've somehow underperformed. The fact is this: they issued guidance for their profits for this quarter, and beat their own guidance. Third-party analysts issued their own estimates, which were significantly higher, and the market responded to those estimates by overvaluing the stock. When the quarterly results were issued, it turned out that the analysts were wrong, and the market, which had "bought the rumor", promptly corrected to a more realistic valuation. I fail to see how a third party being over-optimistic is Apple's fault. People tend to assume that when a stock loses a significant amount of value in a short period of time, a company has done something wrong. This is a great example of why this is not the case - speculators wrongly assumed that Apple would be even more ultra-profitable than they actually are, and overvalued the stock. The resulting correction was healthy.