Steve Jobs tells Apple employees and investors to "hang in there"

Although the market as a whole has taken a beating lately, the rollercoaster ride has been particularly harsh on Apple stockholders, who've seen their shares fall from a high of $202 earlier this year to just over $130 today. Of course, among the hardest hit was Steve himself, who has over 5M shares of the company -- which is why he may have sent out an email today advising employees to "hang in there." Calling the past week "a remarkable last few days," Jobs pointed to Apple's product pipeline, people, strategy and -- perhaps most importantly -- $18B of straight cash in the bank as reasons to have faith, and said that factors "larger than ourselves" were taking their toll on the stock price. That may be so, but it's still pretty unlike Jobs to comment on things like this -- we suppose taking a $377M hit on paper would probably cause us to say a few things as well.

[PynkFloydd Posted Jan 29th 2008 6:05PM]

I think everyone is forgetting that DRM (iTunes) was a major part of our lives until recently. Correct me if I'm wrong but, didn't this mean that if you bought something off of iTunes it would only play (easily and without conversions that a basic user doesn't want to bother with) on an iPod? Since iTunes was the premier source of music...didn't that guarantee iPod sales?

I'm just speculating since I've never seen this debated. Wouldn't the drop of DRM as of lately, produce a more unchained market (which Jobs seems to despise) that would allow end users to switch music players easily? I'm just assuming that a locked in compatibility is all part of Apple's business model. Since people seemed to find a way to combat that, I would assume it's taking its toll on Apple's growth.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 30th 2008 11:23PM]

How silly can fan boys be… of course Apple losses money on unlocked iPhones, remember they are not being sold for the price they should to have profits… they are being subsidies, this means that AT&T covers for the real price of it as long as they get a 2 year contract… Meaning Apple sells with no profits an expensive device for the low public price, yet the deal was to be subsided and earn from same revenue as AT&T would. AT&T investors thought it through and knew Jobsy would try to sell them a parcel on the moon, let him play and go along; they did get like 2.5M new contracts and now just get to see the gloating blow itself. So 1M means down the drain no gain.