Apple Inc. (AAPL) Losing Power On the Market, But Also Off It?

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) was on top of the world not that long ago, listing as the most valuable publicly-traded company in the world just six short months ago. Since then, its value has plummeted more than 40 percent, and there seems to be not much relief in sight.  But apparently, not only is Cupertino losing power and prestige on the markets and with consumers, but it also seems to be having some power outages with some of its services, especially involving Apple’s cloud.

The Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) iCloud service has certainly been stretched over the last couple of years as more and more iDevices are purchased and more and more users are storing their messages, music, files and video content in the cloud. While no official cause has been determined, there have been several reports recently of outages with several Apple services that are all supported by iCloud.

Just this week, three different Game Center outages were reported totaling nearly 2 1/2 hours, which affected a large number of users who were attempting to use the game Center service during  those interruptions. One such interruption lasted for 90 minutes.

Image: Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) iTunes Screenshot

In addition, there have been some isolated complaints about not getting service to the iTunes store, and Apple did confirm some problems this past Tuesday, but resolved the issue by Wednesday morning. In related cases, both iMessenger and FaceTime saw a disruption April 9 that lasted five hours, and the same services went down again for about an hour on April 12.

Not that long ago, these types of disruptions would have been a big deal for Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) or its customers. But as Cupertino has sold millions of iPhones and iPads in recent years, the number of iCloud users has grown geometrically while the data center storage capacity has been relatively stable during this time. If the disruptions are linked to a shortage of data center space, then we might see some more disruptions in the coming months, as Apple is currently building a new data center facility outside Reno, Nev., but that will not be fully operational until late this year at the earliest.

What are your thoughts? Are you an Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) customer and iCloud user, and have you been subjected to one of these recent outages? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below, and we’d be happy to talk about where Apple might be headed.

DISCLOSURE: I own no positions in any stock mentioned.