[NewsPoster]

Apple, which is closing in on holding some $200 billion in cash, is well known for being one of the richest companies on the planet. A new report from Moody's Investors Service release on Thursday notes that the iPhone maker actually held more cash on hand at the end of 2014 -- when it had $178 billion -- than most US industrial sectors put together, surpassed only by the whole of the tech sector, the financial sector and the medical industry.

This is in spite of the fact that Apple has divested itself of some $150 billion in dividends, stock buybacks, and other money returned to investors over the past few years, and just announced a raise in the dividend to 52 cents per share. According to the report, Apple has about 10.2 percent of all the cash held across all companies in the study, and has been the top US cash holder since 2011. Microsoft came in second with $90.2 billon on hand, while Google was in third place with $64.4 billion. However, most of Apple's cash is held overseas, which creates some issues for the company.

Apple continues as top US smartphone maker, ComScore says

The latest US mobile market figures from ComScore, covering the period between December 2014 and March of this year, shows once again that Apple was the top smartphone maker in the US, with 42.6 percent share by subscriber, an increase of a full percentage point from the December quarterly result. Samsung, Apple's top rival in the US, dropped 1.4 percent -- suggesting that recent remarks from Apple CEO Tim Cook about an increase in switchers has turned out to be correct in the US as well as in other markets.

Rounding out the top five makers were LG with 8.4 percent share (a 0.4 percent increase), Motorola at five percent (down 0.2 percent), and HTC with 3.8 percent (up 0.1 percent). Android is still the overall top platform with 52.4 percent share, though this is a drop of 0.7 percent from the previous quarter. Windows Phone saw a marginal drop in its third-place share to 3.3 percent, BlackBerry took the fourth spot, dropping from 1.8 percent to 1.6 percent. US ownership of smartphones went up three percent in the most recent quarter.

[climacs]

and yet the home run 2Q15 has barely budged AAPL... it jumped up over the course of a few days and now is about where it was to begin with. I was resisting what I believed to be irrational exuberance of Icahn, but I think he's right: this stock is grossly undervalued. (yes, I know it is only worth what others are willing to pay for it. It's too low.)

[climacs]

"According to the report, Apple has about 10.2 percent of all the cash held across all companies in the study, and has been the top US cash holder since 2011." Most corporations don't stockpile cash, though. They put it to work. This is actually a testament to how successful (and wise) Apple is. They have not done any stupid, multibillion-dollar mergers. (Beats was not stupid and a $3B merger is small potatoes.) The money piles up faster than they know what to do with it.

[Charles Martin]

If the US government can find a way to encourage companies to import some of their foreign profits without just giving away the store tax-wise (corporations, for the most part, already do not pay their fair share of the tax burden), it would be a great day for Apple -- but in the meantime its short-term solution of borrowing at low interest rates seems to be working out just fine.

[TheGreatButcher]

Mentioning cash on its own isn't the complete picture anymore, given how Apple has issued bonds to effectively return the capital without facing US taxes.

[iphonerulez]

It's rather amazing how Wall Street can make some profitable companies look bad and unprofitable companies look so good. There's always this talk about how Apple will one day prove how valuable it actually is to shareholders, but that day looks about as far away as it ever did. YTD and for the 52 week period, Netflix shareholders are putting Apple's shareholders to shame. Wall Street has the perception of future growth down to a science. Any group of investors can make claims how great a company is going to be years from now and not necessarily have a shred of proof. They can point at one company and say their growth is going to falter and another company and say their growth will prosper. Apple is always being assumed as a company whose growth will falter and its being priced as such. I remember at one point RIM was seen as a company with supposedly unlimited growth for years and investors were just raking in money and yet ultimately the company failed within a very short time but certain people got very rich from their deceptions. The BlackBerry smartphone was supposed to destroy the iPhone but yet look how it turned out. Apple can buy a dozen RIMs.

Apple shareholders will continue to lied to by the Wall Street crooks about how Apple's growth potential remains at zero while pumping other companies' value to the heavens. I can only say to fellow Apple shareholders not to give up on Apple because its share gains are so slow. That reserve cash isn't going anywhere and can be used if absolutely necessary. Don't worry about those other companies Wall Street keeps pumping because they may not be around tomorrow after being sucked dry by the crooked Wall Street manipulators.