Apple falls 4% and drops below $2 trillion market valuation after report of weakening demand for its MacBooks and AirPods

• Apple kicked off 2023 with more losses, falling as much as 4% to hit its lowest level since June 2021.
• Tuesday's decline sent the iPhone maker below its $2 trillion market valuation.
• The sell-off came after a report from Nikkei about weak demand for some Apple products.

Apple's weakness in 2022 has officially spilled over into 2023, with the stock kicking the year off with a 4% decline.

Tuesday's sell-off wiped out $85 billion in market value for Apple and sent the iPhone maker below the $2 trillion valuation threshold for the first time since May. Apple was the last company to hold onto such a high valuation, with Microsoft falling below that level early last year.

Apple first topped $2 trillion in August 2020 as the pandemic supercharged its product sales due to work-from-home trends. Sales of its laptops saw a significant boost, while its iPhone also helped generate record revenues. The valuation ultimately hit a high of about $3 trillion when stocks peaked on January 3, 2022.

But now Apple, according to a Monday report from Nikkei, is seeing weaker demand, specifically for its MacBooks, AirPods, and Apple Watch.

"Apple has alerted us to lower orders for almost all product lines actually since the quarter ending December, partly because the demand is not that strong," a manager at an Apple supplier told Nikkei Asia.

Apple has already seen weakness due to wide-ranging COVID infections in China, leading to reduced output from factories that make its all-important iPhone.

The reduced manufacturing output led to significant lead times for customers to get their hands on the popular iPhone Pro models in time for the holidays last month. Even today, the delivery wait time for an iPhone 14 Pro is about two weeks, according to Apple's website.

Apple's 4% drop on Tuesday outpaced the S&P 500's decline of about 0.6%. The only mega-cap tech stock that fell more than Apple on Tuesday was Tesla, which is down more than 11% on light fourth-quarter deliveries.