[grape_surgeon]

Investment is about growth; Apple is already huge. When you've already cornered your respective market niches and you have big competitors it's hard to grow more. That said I think there are less reliable investments, so Apple's probably fine.

[Veserv]

Investment is actually about returns. Growth is a means of getting returns, but not the only way. A large, stable, profitable company with no growth prospects is not a poor investment if they pay out returns.

[Gud]

Doesn't have to be. A non-growning company that is yielding high profit can still be worth a large amount of money.

[freedomben]

Indeed. As profitable companies get big and struggle more with growth, they can do stock buybacks, or pay out dividends. Plenty of stocks have held strong with small growth % but non-trivial dividends. I agree, when talking about companies this size, it isn't all about growth.

[paganel]

Presumably Apple has enough cash on hand so that it could "pay back" its current shareholders by big (relatively speaking) dividends and even stock buy-backs, but not sure how much that influences the buy/sell decisions of retail/small stock-exchange investors.