Ever wonder how much power one blog can swing? Well, Apple got a taste of that today as they saw their market value dropped by a whoppin’ $4 billion because of one post from Engadget.
Engadget made a post saying that the iPhone and Leopard operating system launches would be seriously delayed. They based the story on an internal Apple email that was forwarded to them.
This one doesn’t bode well for Mac fans and the iPhone-hopeful: we have it on authority that as of today, the iPhone launch is being pushed back from June to… October (!), and Leopard is again seeing a delay, this time being pushed all the way back to January. Of 2008. The latest WWDC Leopard beta will still be handed out, but it looks like Apple-quality takes time, and we’re sure Jobs would remind everyone that it’s not always about “writing a checkâ€, but just how much time are these two products really going to take?
Within minutes of the post going live, Apple stock dropped from $107.89 to $103.42, wiping over $4 billion off the company’s net worth in just six minutes!
It turns out the email was a hoax. In an update, Engadget said that the email was in fact sent from Apple’s internal email system, but that it was not accurate. Apple quickly notified Engadget of the error, saying “This communication is fake and did not come from Apple. Apple is on track to ship iPhone in late June and Mac OS X Leopard in October.â€
After Engadget made the update, Apple stock went back up but it still ended the day $1.25 billion less than when it started. All this happened in 22 minutes. Who would have imagine a blog can swing that kind of power over the market?
Source: TechCrunch