Appletell

The Superior Court of California in Santa Clara is summoning your favorite CEO, Steve Jobs, as well as other Apple officials back to court for a new lawsuit from the Boston Retirement Board.  This group is claiming over $105 million was lost on backdated stock options granted to Mr. Jobs.  Technically speaking, backdating is legal, but can harm other shareholders involved with the company.  Also, it must be declared Securities and Exchange Commission beforehand, which is the part these officials are accused of disregarding.

The BRB also claims that is has specifics to back up the charges, but they have not released the details yet because the court has yet to figure out how to handle the confidential information.  These types of cases have been coming to various Apple officials for about two years now, but have been stalled or dismissed due to a lack of evidence and rulings that the backdating did not clearly affect Apple’s stock price.  What are all your thoughts on this?

Apple shares fell about 4% after AT&T’s first quarter earnings report despite rising for the two days beforehand.  Investors were expecting huge iPhone sales for AT&T to help Apple reach it’s 10 million iPhone’s sold goal.  However, AT&T announced that it has only received 1.3 million new net subscribers across all of its devices which means not as many iPhones were sold as expected.  Still, TechCrunch points out that many iPhone’s have been sold internationally and then unlocked (around 30%), meaning that Apple could have sold more phones that AT&T’s numbers show.  From the call:

iPhone continues to be very popular with customers, feedback is very good. ARPUs are in the mid to upper 90s across the base. We continue to see customers adopting iPhone. Over 40% are new to us. Nothing really new in trends there. Continued, solid growth

All of these numbers and reports are, obviously, before the announcement of a 3G iPhone.  This device is expected to increase sales by a huge amount due to the high anticipation and demand.  However, even before this announcement, AT&T has reported a 22% profit increase, so the iPhone must be doing something right for them.  What do you think of all this?  How close is Apple to 10 million devices?

Today, AAPL stock dropped below $10 a share and even though the price seems good, analysts are asking you to step back and spend your money elsewhere. Even with the recent launch of Apple’s (destined to fail) iPod, everyone is still advising you to hold onto your money. A major release bringing a drop in stock prices is pretty bad, and from the looks of Apple’s new product lineup, you shouldn’t expect the stock to do anything for the next few years - if the company is still around.

The industry seems to be investing more and more into the Microsoft company, who is said to be working on a product much better than anything Apple could put out at this current time, dubbed Windows XP. This software is said to be so revolutionary that it will include both a Notepad, Calculator, and the popular game Minesweeper.