Industry flounders as Apple tanks
 

The knock on effect of Apple's rapid fall is having a knock on effect on its partners.

Fusion-io slashed its fiscal 2013 revenue forecast sending the storage drive maker's shares down 21 per cent.

Apple contributed nearly a quarter of Fusion-io's total sales last year

The company, whose competitors include OCZ Technology Group and Stec, told Reuters that it expects revenue of about $420 million to $440 million in the year ending June 2013, down from its earlier estimate of about $521 million to $539 million.

Analysts on average were expecting revenue of $530.1 million in the period.

Ironically, the company employs Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak as its chief scientist. It makes solid state memory drives using NAND flash technology.

Fusion-io posted net income of $1.7 million in the second quarter, compared with a net loss of $5.7 million a year earlier.

Things are starting to unravel for Apple as its reality distortion field has started to crumble and customers, particularly in the Far East, have started to lose interest in buying overpriced toys.

Yesterday, Apple's second largest active shareholder Will Danoff, who runs the $85 billion Fidelity Contrafund fund dumped more than 3.1 percent of his investment in Jobs' Mob.

Apple is still Fidelity's biggest investment and the trimming is seen as part of a general souring in the company as US retail investors have got sick of it.

All that happened when the holiday sales figures revealed that Apple had lost its shine. More than $50 billion was lopped off the company's market capitalisation in one day of trading last week.

Danoff has been bullish about Apple saying that it is generating a billion dollars of free cash flow per week, but he acknowledged the stock slide and stiffer competition.

He added that the stock has been disappointing in the last quarter or two.

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