Will Infected Macs Dampen Apple's Stock?

By Stephanie Jordan
in

April’s reappearance of a Flashback variant—the most recent being Flashback.C, which masqueraded as an update to Adobe Flash Player and discovered last fall—is too recent to have any impact on this week’s Apple earnings reports and stock reaction, but one wonders if this crack in the oft-cited “more secure platform” that Apple has enjoyed will change in the future.

This week, Apple stock climbed back above $600 a share after suffering two weeks of losses. The gain coincided with Apple’s fiscal 2012-second quarter (ending March 31) earnings announcement, which states quarterly revenue of $39.2 billion and quarterly net profit of $11.6 billion.

The stock decline of two weeks ago happened at the same time as the news of the current Trojan became publicized. Infected Macs are projected to be in the neighborhood of 650,000 but there seems to be trouble detecting and confirming the accuracy of that number. Dubbed “the most successful botnet attack ever on the Mac OS X platform,” it is estimated that half of the infected machines are in the U.S.

According to its earnings announcement, Apple realized an 88 percent iPhone unit growth, as compared to last year in the same period. Apple iPads continue to soar in popularity with 11.8 million sold during the quarter, representing a 151 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. A more modest growth was seen with 4 million Macs sold during the quarter, a 7 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter.

As for the virus, notes F-Secure in a blog earlier this month: “If you haven’t already disabled your Java client, please do so before this thing really becomes an outbreak.” The company posted instructions on how to disable Java. 

For its part, Apple did publish a security update for Java in about 24 hours upon discovery, which some report was “too long.”

Is Wall Street worried about such things as viruses on Macs? Appears not, when compared to the phenomenal growth of iPhones. One enthusiastic analyst, Brian White of Topeka Capital Markets, upon review of the financial results this week put a price target “from $1,001 to $1,011” on the stock. White is quoted as saying: “We believe the negative vibes that have held back the stock over the past couple of weeks will now be replaced with the fear of missing the next leg up in the stock price.”

Published April 27, 2012