A drop in the bucket for Apple. It is more about the principle I suppose, more so than the cash.
Over the past decade both companies have been attempting to amass more and more patents to use against each other. Both have had limited success against each other in court. When one wins a victory, it's overturned somewhere else on appeal, or judgements are significantly reduced.
Honestly, it's a total stalemate. Apple's suing over products that have been outdated for more than a decade. Samsung has already changed their design to avoid any more of Apple's patents, making any future litigation impossible.
All the comments about the dollar value of this suit are missing this point. I would assume Apple cares much more about sending a message to Samsung and others that they feel are simply copying their innovations. And if it gets their competitors to change their behavior and differentiate themselves, then the lawsuits are probably worth Apple's investment.
While this is true, a lot of people have questioned if fighting all these patent battles on different fronts have allowed Android and Microsoft to catch up and pass them - stunting the companies ability to "make great products our customers want."
When you look at what they've done since Jobs has been gone, they really haven't had another groundbreaking product - all "innovations" have been incremental. Even their 6s which finally came with a larger (4.7) screen was released this year. By comparison, The Galaxy SIII and the Nexus 4 with the same size screen was released in 2012, 3 years before Apple finally went to a larger screen.
The company has been taking hits from wall street all year as well - this was a report back in August:
Apple's earnings were good. But Wall Street was disappointed that iPhone sales were a little lower than expected. Its outlook was also less bullish than what analysts were predicting.
There are concerns that Apple may be losing ground in China, an increasingly important market for the company. China accounted for more than 25% of the company's total sales in its most recent quarter.
Tech research firm Canalys reported Tuesday that Apple, which had the smartphone market share lead in China during the first quarter, slipped to third in the second quarter. Apple is now trailing Chinese tech companies Xiaomi and Huawei.
And. . .
"Can Apple find new geographies to drive growth? Probably not. Will they be able to lift the average selling price? Probably not. Are they dependent on the iPhone? Yes. There's only so much room to grow," Gillis said.
Gillis said investors want to see the company develop more products that can keep revenue and profits growing in the future.
It can't rely on the iPhone forever. The jury is out on whether the Apple Watch will ever be more than just a niche product.
The pressure to keep churning out hot new gadgets may be keeping some investors on the sidelines as well.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/04/investing/apple-stock-down-i...