Apple fell $3.74 per cent to a price of $130.20 per share, a 52-week low, giving the company a valuation of $1.99 trillion at market close.

What is significant about all this is that the Tame Apple Press cheered when the company hit a $2 trillion valuation in August 2020, as the pandemic boosted its sales of computers and phones for remote work and school. It briefly hit a market value of over $3 trillion during trading in January 2022 and since then, has slid back.

This has caused the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street to say that Apple has lost its momentum.

Part of the problem is that Apple struggled with iPhone 14 Pro shipments during the holiday season because of Covid restrictions on its primary factory in China.

The other issue was that the iPhone 14 really needed something to write home about and users thought they were better off hanging onto their iPhone 13s instead.

Wall Street is worried about rising interest rates and declining consumer confidence. This is Wall Street speak for a scenario were an overpriced product, like anything made by Apple, suffers because people are too poor to afford it and start to see what else is out there. For Apple, the long term effects of people looking for products outside its Walled Garden are immersible. There is a risk that users will discover that an Android phone can do what an iPhone does for half the price and never go back.

A recent report from supply chain analyst Trendforce said it saw Apple’s iPhone shipments decline 22 per cent in the December quarter. Apple has told suppliers to make fewer components for products, including AirPods, Apple Watch and MacBook laptops, according to Nikkei. 

Apple is the last big company to give up its $2 trillion valuation. Previously, Microsoft hit the $2 trillion mark but retreated from it in 2022.

In 2022, Apple underperformed the S&P 500 index, which declined more than 18 per cent. Apple’s share price fell nearly 27 per cent in 2022.