Apple Sheds 4 Facebooks Worth of Market Cap in 5 Months

Five months ago, on September 21, 2012, Apple's iPhone 5 hit the stores in nine countries including the U.S., Japan, Germany and the U.K. All was good in Cupertino. The company's stock had just hit an all-time high, briefly pushing its market cap beyond $650 billion. Apple was the most valuable public company on earth by a wide margin.

What happened next is almost as remarkable as Apple's meteoric rise over the preceding years: a couple of bad news mixed with the high expectations the company itself had created, were enough to turn the sentiment surrounding Apple completely around. Suddenly the company that had been a Wall Street's darling for years, struggled to deliver positive news and its stock price began to plummet. Over the past five months, the market shaved an incredible $235 billion off Apple's valuation. To put things in perspective: $235 billion is roughly equivalent to twice Amazon's market cap, four times Facebook's valuation and 14 LinkedIns. It even comes close to the market capitalization of Google, one of Apple's more potent competitors and current Wall Street darling.

2013 will be a crucial year for Apple, as Tim Cook and his team will try to refute the claims that the company's best days are behind it.