Apple (AAPL) Stock Falls Today as App Store, iTunes, Other Services Crash

Shares of Apple (AAPL) were down Wednesday after the tech giant announced many of its services, including iTunes and the App Store, had gone down for many users.

Author:: Andrew Meola
Publish date:: Mar 11, 2015 12:09 PM EDT

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Apple (AAPL) - Get Report fell 0.8% to $123.52 in early afternoon trading Wednesday after the tech giant announced many of its services, including iTunes and the App Store, had gone down for many users.

"Customers may be unable to make purchases from the App Store, iTunes Store, iBooks Store, or Mac App Store," Apple announced on its website.

Apple also said its iCloud Mail and iCloud Account & Sign In had been affected until approximately 9 a.m. ET, but had been restored. The other services were affected at approximately 5 a.m. ET.

Bloomberg first reported the service disruption and noted users in several countries, including the U.S., U.K., Switzerland, and Hong Kong, were affected by the outages.

Apple shares have fallen approximately 3% since Monday, when the company held its major Apple Watch event.

Insight from TheStreet's Research Team:

Apple is a core holding of Jim Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS Charitable Trust Portfolio. Here is what Jim Cramer, Portfolio Manager & Jack Mohr, Director of Research - Action Alerts PLUS had to say about the stock in a recent alert:

Monday, Apple hosted its Spring Forward event in San Francisco, providing details on the Apple Watch (which rolls out April 24), a major update to the MacBook and several other notable items like ResearchKit and HBO streaming exclusivity on Apple TV. We believe these announcements reinforce the strength of Apple's ecosystem and its ability to capture customers on a wide variety of platforms.
The main attraction was clearly the Apple Watch, and CEO Tim Cook set the tone by describing the new devices as the "most advanced timepiece ever created." While the Watch was already brought into the spotlight at Apple's September 2014 unveiling, this event provided the platform for Apple to get specific about details. Apple made it clear that the Watch is seeing an expanding list of use cases: apps that will be available at launch include Twitter (TWTR) - Get Report, Instagram, OpenTable (OPEN) , and WeChat. Customers will also find an assortment of fitness, travel and Internet of Things (i.e., adjusting a thermostat) functions. These efforts are crucial to driving the initial wave of adoption. We would also note that the 18-hour battery life was significantly better than expected. With the ramp of smartphones with built-in clocks, the need for a wristwatch has steadily declined over the years; however, we believe Apple Watch brings a new purpose to the wristwatch and makes them cool again.
We were also pleased with the MacBook category update, and we believe these new products could help Apple keep growing well above the PC market through 2016. At the event, Apple's focus was a new MacBook. Details were impressive, including total weight of only two pounds, 13.1 mm thickness, a revamped keyboard, retina display and force touch trackpad, which includes a "taptic engine" that provides a tactile response to commands and signals when a task has been completed. Additionally, Apple eliminated the system fan with help from new components. Battery life is nine hours and the product will sell in three versions: gold, space gray and silver.
- Jim Cramer and Jack Mohr, 'Our Apple Event Takeaways' originally published 3/10/2015 on ActionAlertsPLUS.com.

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Separately, TheStreet Ratings team rates APPLE INC as a Buy with a ratings score of A+. TheStreet Ratings Team has this to say about their recommendation:

"We rate APPLE INC (AAPL) a BUY. This is based on the convergence of positive investment measures, which should help this stock outperform the majority of stocks that we rate. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its solid stock price performance, impressive record of earnings per share growth, compelling growth in net income, revenue growth and notable return on equity. Although no company is perfect, currently we do not see any significant weaknesses which are likely to detract from the generally positive outlook."

You can view the full analysis from the report here: AAPL Ratings Report