This morning alone, Apple shares fell more than 3 percent. And they’re down nearly 8 percent from last Monday’s close (caveat: The stock is still up well over 40 percent this year).

So what’s dragging the stock down?

Any number of things, really. The antitrust charges recently filed against Apple and major book publishers by the Department of Justice. Concerns that Apple’s carrier partners are tired of offering high subsidies on the iPhone and will soon begin to rein them in, cutting into the company’s high margins on the device.

Another thought: This could be profit-taking, plain and simple.

Or, as ISI Group analyst Brian Marshall suggests, the stock could just be cooling off a bit. “We believe this could be a simple ‘collapsing’ on its own weight given the year-to-date move (i.e., AAPL up ~45 percent vs. S&P 500 up ~10 percent).”

The San Mateo, Calif.-based company is looking to raise up to $80 million, for a market valuation of up to $305.6 million.

The company should price tonight at $16 to $18 apiece and start trading tomorrow on Nasdaq under the symbol PRSS.

UPDATE: This evening, CafePress announced that it priced above the range at $19 a share. It plans to sell 2.5 million shares, and shareholders are looking to unload another two million.

CafePress is the latest consumer-facing technology company to raise money in the public markets. Other recent IPOs falling into this category range from Groupon to Angie’s List and Yelp.

The two most recent, Angie’s List and Yelp, have both performed well.

Angie’s List, which aggregates consumer reviews of service providers, debuted in November at $13 a share and is now trading at $19.91 a share. Yelp, which also aggregates reviews of restaurants and other local businesses, has done even better. After pricing earlier this month at $15 a share, it now trades at $28.10 a share.

Before it pays underwriters, CafePress’s share of the proceeds will fall between $40 million and $45 million.

In 2011, the company recorded a profit of $3.6 million on revenues of $175 million. Last year, it had 2.7 million customers with an average order of $50 each. A year earlier, it had 2.1 million customers with an average order of $48.

Underwriters include J.P. Morgan, Cowen and Company, Raymond James, Janney Montgomery Scott, and Jefferies.

The easy answer is that the company is worth whatever the market says it’s worth. Well, yes, the market is right every day — but it is right only for that day. What about tomorrow?

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Rakuten is set on challenging Amazon’s global dominance by appealing to the third-party merchants Amazon works with today and by growing it’s digital content business to compete with the Kindle.

We recently learned about the company’s strategy through the eyes of Neel Grover, the CEO of Buy.com, Rakuten’s online shopping subsidiary in the U.S.

For now, Rakuten is admittedly Amazon’s much smaller competitor, though it is dominant in Japan.

The publicly held company is worth $14.5 billion compared to Amazon’s $85 billion market capitalization, and it pales in comparison to Amazon’s mass in the U.S. Buy.com is ranked 410th here versus Amazon’s sixth-place standing, according to Compete.

But Grover said Rakuten has a two-part plan for going up against Amazon.

First, it will target and partner with third-party resellers and merchants.

Amazon does this, too, but often ends up competing with the merchants because it has its own warehouses and products that it is selling, he said.

“Oftentimes Amazon will compete with the retailer. [Third-party merchants] teach Amazon what to buy and sell, which is ultimately not good for the merchant,” he said.

Rakuten, on the other hand, does not own any warehouses or any inventory itself and instead gives retailers — brick and mortar or e-commerce — the tools and traffic to support their own businesses.

In May 2010, Rakuten acquired Buy.com.

“I sought out Rakuten. … I thought their model was one that would give us a unique differentiator in the U.S. and we could learn and bring their model to our site and customers,” Grover said. “We are still in the final stages of transforming, and it’s taken a bit of time to get it transformed.”

But, he confidently added, “It will win out in the long-term.”

A similar approach is being taken by eBay, another e-commerce giant in the U.S.

The second part of Rakuten’s plan is to go after Amazon’s growing digital business, spanning music, e-books and other content.

In November, the Japanese company purchased Kobo, a runner-up in the e-reader race behind the Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook. It paid $315 million in cash for the Canadian company.

Rakuten is banking on the Kobo in assisting with its move into providing downloadable media to consumers, starting with e-books.

At the time of the acquisition, Kobo CEO Michael Serbinis told All Things D that Rakuten will give Kobo the financial backing to grow internationally, as well as compete in the U.S.

“The U.S. is absolutely important. It’s fundamental. We have millions of U.S. users today, and we plan to grow that substantially, and internationally it represents a big opportunity as well,” he said.

Earlier this month, Buy.com started linking to Kobo from its site, so that consumers have the option of buying a physical copy of a book or a digital version. Other integration efforts are also under way.

It also wants to get into other digital content, like music. Back in 1999, Buy.com was one of the original sites to have a digital music store, but Grover said it was a pretty poor experience because of all the restrictions that record labels were mandating. A lot of that has now changed.

“We are definitely looking as a group at all digital content. … We are looking at different solutions, but today we have not continued on with our initial music store,” he said.

As with Kobo and Buy.com, acquisitions are always an option, he said.

“We’ll continue to look at everything that would make our business better. It hasn’t been shy over the past two years. We have a global vision to create an e-commerce marketplace offering all goods, and we continue to see that grow.”

And going up against Amazon, some serious growth is what Rakuten and Buy.com will need.

Zynga is expected to follow Nexon out later this week, and is seeking to raise $1 billion in a U.S.-based public offering.

The two companies have a lot in common.

Nexon, which is known for games such as MapleStory, has profited off the “freemium” model, in which games are given away for free and monetized through virtual goods. The 17-year-old company operates mostly in Asia today, but increasingly it is launching games on Facebook and Apple’s iPhone and iPad in the U.S.

Zynga, which has only been in the market for four years, is on target to have the largest Internet IPO in the U.S. since Google. Nexon’s IPO was the largest in Japan this year.

But today, Nexon received a less-than-stellar public reception, with shares falling marginally in early trading.

Still, it’s not clear that Zynga will share the same fate.

Many analysts attributed Nexon’s early morning decline to general economic weakness, which has plagued the Tokyo stock exchange for a while. Another analyst told Reuters that Nexon was priced fairly and therefore a big lift wasn’t expected.

In many respects, Zynga has very similar ambitions to Nexon. Not only is it seeking to raise about the same amount of money, it is also asking for the same valuation.

Following its public offering, Nexon’s market capitalization totaled at 553 billion yen, according to The Wall Street Journal. In U.S. dollars, that translates to about $7 billion. If Zynga is able to sell one billion shares at the top end of its range, it would be valued at the same amount.

Still, that’s down from earlier this year, when Zynga was privately valued at as much as $10 billion.

Earlier this morning, Zynga announced it would price its stock between $8.50 and $10 a share when it goes public later this month.

That’s at the high end of the range that values the four-year-old company at as much as $7 billion. But that’s much lower than than what some investors paid as recently as February, according to documents filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

In fact, some of its investors are already underwater.

One of those investors is Morgan Stanley, which is also one of the company’s underwriters in its IPO. In February, 11 mutual funds associated with Morgan Stanley purchased 5.3 million shares at $14 apiece for a total of $75 million. Four other investors, which were unnamed, also contributed to the round totaling $490 million, according to the document.

At $14 a share, the company’s value in February totaled nearly $10 billion, or roughly 43 percent greater than today’s high-end of the range.

Zynga justified the higher stock price back in February, stating that the U.S. economy had improved and that the public markets were being receptive to Internet stocks, including generous valuations for privately held companies such as Facebook and Groupon.

Furthermore, in March, the company used that valuation as a guide to purchase shares back from five of its early investors and its CEO Mark Pincus at $13.96 a share.

While the market conditions have likely changed since then, it’s important to note that things are still in flux. If the company drums up enough demand for the 115 million shares being sold over the next two weeks, the price could move even higher.

As Kara Swisher previously reported, Pincus will not sell any shares in the offering, and no other executives at Zynga have plans to sell stock, either.

But a number of the company’s early investors will be cashing in. Institutional Venture Partners, Avalon Ventures and Foundry Venture Capital will sell 2.5 million shares apiece for up to $25 million each. Union Square Ventures will sell 2.2 million for roughly $22 million.  Google and Silver Lake Partners will also both sell 1.7 million shares for a proceed of $17 million each.

Google was originally not listed as an investor when Zynga filed documents with the SEC to go public, but it showed up in subsequent filings. Google, which was rumored to have invested as much as $100 million in Zynga, has an interest in social gaming because of its Google+ network. Following the offering, it will continue to own 21 million shares, or about 3.8 percent of the company.

One notable shareholder that won’t be selling shares is venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, an early investor in the company. Its partner Bing Gordon, who personally owns a 10.7 percent stake in the company, also does not plan to sell any shares.

The company filed documents with the Securities & Exchange Commission this morning, indicating that it intends to raise between $850 million and $1.15 billion in its public offering.

At the high end of the range, that would translate to roughly $150 million more than it had previously estimated it could raise.

The company is seeking to sell 100 million shares at $8.50 to $10 a share and will reserve 15 million additional shares for extra demand. It expects to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker ZNGA.

Under the best circumstances, the company will be valued at nearly $7 billion based on 699.3 million shares outstanding. That falls below some of the rumored expectations that have been floating around over the past few weeks.

Still, at that value, it will come close to the public valuation of Electronic Arts, which hovers around $7.8 billion, but falls short of other game publishers, like Activision, which has a value of  $14 billion.

Zynga has made its riches off selling virtual goods in social games on Facebook. Some of its most recognizable titles include FarmVille, CityVille, Poker and Words With Friends.

Virtual goods often allow players to continue to play the game and level-up faster, such as an energy boost. They also can be decorative in nature, like an outfit for an avatar or seeds to plant on a farm. Of the roughly 230 million monthly active users, very few players ever bother making a purchase.

Since the beginning, the company has a very close relationship with Facebook, which has been contentious at times, especially since the platform started collecting a 30 percent tax on all virtual goods sold. More recently, the company has tried to expand to other platforms, including the launch of several games on mobile and Google+. It also has its own online game network in production.

The company’s IPO will be one of the largest tech offerings in recent memory.

In early November, Groupon raised $700 million including overallotments. It had originally sought to raise $750 million. Other recent tech IPOs include Angie’s List, Pandora and LinkedIn.

But some critics think Zynga is rushing its offering before a broad financial collapse. If it waited until reporting fourth-quarter results, it could paint a stronger growth story as it completes the busy holiday period.

The San Francisco company, which was founded in 2007, was named after Founder and CEO Mark Pincus’s dog named Zinga.

In 2010, Zynga recorded a profit of $27.9 million on revenues of $597.5 million. In the first nine months of 2011, it broke even on revenues of $828.9 million.

While its revenues continue to grow, the number of daily active users that play its games has fallen two quarters in a row and some critics question whether the company can keep up its aggressive growth.

In recent weeks, Pincus has come under harsh criticism for his heavy-handed leadership approach. But to his credit, he has overseen rapid growth, including the acquisition of dozens of smaller game studios. Today, his company has 2,500 employees.

At the mid-range of its expectations, Zynga will bring home proceeds of $889.4 million after selling shareholders take their winnings.

The primary purpose of the sale is to increase its visibility in the marketplace and create a market for its stock. Proceeds will go towards working capital, but also $83.6 million will be spent to satisfy tax withholding obligations related to stock of current and former employees. Additionally, it plans to use a portion of the proceeds for charitable causes through its Zynga.org initiative.

As part of the sale, the company will have three classes of shares. Class A stock will have one vote per share; Class B stock will have seven votes; and Class C will have 70 votes.

Pincus owns some Class B shares, and all of the company’s Class C shares. Following the offering, he will control 36.2 percent of the company’s voting power.

As Kara Swisher previously reported Pincus will not sell any shares in the offering.

No other executives have plans to sell stock, either. But a number of the company’s early investors will sell stock, including Institutional Venture Partners, Union Square Ventures, Foundry Venture Capital and Avalon Ventures. Other interesting names that made the list include Google, which will sell 1.7 million shares.

The company’s largest institutional holder, venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which owns 11 percent of the shares, will not sell any of its stock in the offering either.

HTC’s strong results reflect rising demand for smartphones as consumers continue to switch from traditional cellphones to gadgets that allow them to browse the Internet, write emails and watch videos.

The Taiwan-based smartphone maker, which is best known for making phones using Google Inc.’s operating system, has been growing at a rapid clip and is neck-and neck with Nokia Corp. in terms of market capitalization.

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San Diego-based Websense has a market capitalization of $826 million and could fetch around $1 billion in a sale, these people said. They cautioned that Websense, which has previously toyed with the idea of a sale, may again decide not to sell itself if offers come in below expectations.

Websense makes software that filters Web content, and companies frequently install it on employee computers to block access to certain types of websites, such as pornography and Facebook. Its online security technology also protects emails, data and other content from cyber attacks.

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“We have to let go of the notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft needs to lose.”

— Apple CEO Steve Jobs, August 1997

And there it is. Today Apple, not Microsoft is the world’s most valuable technology company.

As I write this Apple (AAPL) shares are trading at $244.87, giving it a market capitalization of $223.1 billion. Meanwhile, shares of Microsoft (MSFT) are trading at $24.79 and the company’s market cap sits at $217.78 billion (see table below; click to enlarge).

And so Cupertino has finally surpassed Redmond in total value. The only American company with a market cap greater than Apple is Exxon Mobil (XOM).

UPDATE: Apple closed the day well ahead of Microsoft. Its market cap: $222.07 billion; Microsoft’s: $219.18 billion.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Dueling Market Caps: Apple and Microsoft

Autonomy, a U.K. company that makes software that businesses use to track corporate information, acquired Interwoven (IWOV), a San Jose, Calif., document-management company, for $775 million in cash. Autonomy will sell some stock and tap a new line of credit in order to finance the deal.

The tech M&A world has been quiet for the last few months as companies adjust to the down economy. Many publicly traded tech companies have seen their market capitalizations cut in half over the last few months. Companies aren’t yet prepared to sell at such a discount, the conventional wisdom goes.

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