USA Today's Matt Krantz reported on Friday that Apple slipped down Exxon's unctuous slick to fall behind the oil titan that has now reclaimed its position as "World's Most Valuable Company."
The timing of this transposition may lend itself to some semblance of irony if not serendipity. It was only five months ago - almost to the day of Apple's Friday fall - that news outlets such as Forbes and CBS announced Apple's auspicious rise to "Most Valuable Company"... "Ever."
"On Monday, Apple's surging stock propelled the company's value to $624 billion, the world's highest, ever," Associated Press reported on August 20, 2012. "Apple Inc. has been the world's most valuable company since the end of last year. It's now worth 54 percent more than No. 2 Exxon Mobil Corp."
According to Standard & Poor's, longtime Apple competitor-cum-frenemy Microsoft's own highest peak (in 1999, not accounting for inflation) failed to meet Apple's herculean $624 billion mark, with a gap of nearly four billion dollars.
Prematurely adding insult to injury in its August 2012 summation of Apple, AP suggested the tech corp's all-time high was predicated upon impending excitement over Apple's iPhone 5. Though today we can magnanimously admit that the new iPhone model isn't a miserable failure, it has certainly led to some wide-spanning criticisms of "same/old" from users and critics alike.
Of the iPhone 5 launch event this past September, Forbes contributor Mark Fidelman lamented, "There were no earth shattering announcements, there wasn't a clear vision, the iPhone 5 appears to being playing catch up, and as a result, many feel let down by the organization. Apple will still sell a lot of phones, but it didn't convert anyone."
Some, like CNN's David Goldman, have pinpointed "supply constraints" as being partly responsible for, say, "Verizon [selling] a record number of iPhones in the fourth quarter... [with] only half of those [being] the newest iPhone 5 model."
Others, though, agree with Fidelman's assessment of the iPhone 5 confirming the lack of vision from which the company has been reputedly suffering since the passing of "visionary" co-founder Steve Jobs.
Indeed, Apple Inc. has failed to release a new device since 2010 and, perhaps astutely observed by Complex Tech's Dru Ashe, "Analysts have started to question if Apple can continue to grow by just releasing updated versions of old products."
Whether or not Apple Inc.'s alleged stultification will expedite the company's further descent in the next quarter is, hopefully for Apple stockholders and true-believers alike, the stuff only of the proverbial slippery slope.
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