The 10 top-searched stocks of 2014: Apple is No. 1
We’re looking at the top-searched stocks of 2014 and Apple (AAPL) was number one. There’s no doubt it was a big year for the company and you might just say it was the year of Tim Cook.
Apple’s CEO put his stamp on the company’s products by introducing larger iPhones, something Steve Jobs said the company would never do. Even the naming mechanisms have changed. Jobs was a fan of 'iProducts,' new technology launched under Cook has been dubbed simply Apple (insert product): the Apple watch, Apple Pay and so on.
Related: Should you buy Apple stock?
“Huge year, booming year, monster year [for Apple],” said Yahoo Finance’s Jeff Macke. "Tim Cook finally stamped his name on the company with the Hotel California operating system. That is, once you put your stuff there you can check out any time you like but you can never, ever leave. “
But as Yahoo Finance Senior Columnist Michael Santoli points out, Apple had a big year outside of just launching new gadgets and operating systems. “They started buying back a pile of stock, they took on debt. They answered a lot of the critics on all those fronts.”
In case you missed it, Apple split its stock this year, dividing shares up in sevenths and bringing the share price below $100. It’s also the biggest company in the world, with a market cap above $640 billion.
“Is it a billion dollar company?” asked Macke. “Probably not yet, but Apple is Apple.”
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Every time people write Apple off they seem to make a comeback. As Santoli points out, “It always seems to run hot and cold. They’ll have this great winning streak and then people start to question, ‘What’s next?’ That’s gonna be the 2015 question for Apple.”
After all, remember what happened coming into 2014? “People had written Apple off," Santoli says. "They said they couldn’t innovate anymore. They said the stock was now dead money. And then they came out with the iPhone 6 and suddenly people were reminded, ‘Wow, this is an incredibly innovative company.’”
A lot of the 2015 success may rest in the hands of the Apple Watch (still called the iWatch by so many of us creatures of habit.) According to Rick Newman: “I don’t think the iWatch is going to be what the iPhone is. And this is turning into a mature market for phones.”
That could be a problem for Apple, considering the company has made most of its money of late from phones. With the personal computer and tablet market slowing, the pressure may be more intense than ever for Apple to keep its innovation train running at full speed, even after a big 2014.
More of the top-searched stocks of 2014: