Here are your Apple news items and rumors for Tuesday:
Apple Hits $420, Keeps Climbing: The third week of September is proving positive for Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL). Shares in the Cupertino, Calif.-based company hit an all-time high Monday, closing above $410. By mid-morning Tuesday, shares showed no signs of slowing, trading above $420 as of this writing. A number of journalists and analysts have been projecting that Apple will hit $500 in the not-too-distant future. If the stock continues to maintain this fevered interest up to when the iPhone 5 is announced and then released this fall, $500 seems like an all-too-attainable price target.
Apple Customers Officially Satisfied: The American Consumer Satisfaction Index released its annual consumer approval of computer manufacturers survey Tuesday. After eight years sitting atop the list, Tim Cook probably was a little nervous that Apple might get knocked down a peg, what with the iPad and iPhone selling so poorly around the world. Wait a second! The iPad and iPhone have been breaking sales records on a quarterly basis for over a year now! Then it’s no surprise that Apple took the ACSI survey’s top honor. The company earned an all-time high score of 87 points out of 100. Its nearest rival, Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ), scored 78 points.
Survey Says Back-to-School Season is Mac Season: A Monday report in Fortune (via TUAW) reprinting details from a new Hudson Square Research survey said Apple’s Mac laptop and desktop computers are booming during the back-to-school season. Of the 158 students surveyed across eight colleges in the U.S., 60% have purchased an Apple-made computer in the past three months. Just 38% purchased Macs during the same period in 2010. Hewlett-Packard came in second with 14% of purchases. Sony (NYSE:SNE) and Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) pulled in a respective 6% and 3% this year.
As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here. Follow him on Twitter at @ajohnagnello and become a fan of InvestorPlace on Facebook.
