In a research note to clients today, Shope wrote that “sentiment has moved ahead of reality” on HP shares, which before today had risen by more than 110 percent from a mid-December low of $11.35, to close Monday at $23.84. Today, the shares are down by more than 5.2 percent, and hit $22.09 as of 11:10 am ET.

Shope’s statement is the inverse of what HP CEO Meg Whitman has been saying about the state of the company in recent public comments. “The narrative lags the reality,” is a phrase she’s used often in public comments, such as in an interview at The Wall Street Journal’s CIO Network conference earlier this year. The point was to argue that shareholder sentiment had yet to catch up with an improvement in HP’s fortunes, and it was bolstered somewhat by HP’s first-quarter results.

Shope argued that weak PC sales will continue to drag on any improvements that HP sees in other lines of its business, including server sales, as well as operational improvements brought about by HP’s numerous restructuring moves. He took his price target down to $16, and rated the shares a “sell.”

The e-commerce pioneer’s full-year earnings release on Wednesday shouldn’t do anything to change that. In fact, eBay is coming off four consecutive positive earnings surprises. Going back to the beginning of 2009, its stock price has risen 4.4 percent on average on the day of its earnings release and 9.1 percent on average when reporting earnings for the first three quarters of 2012.

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After a series of surges that carried them beyond $700 in September, Apple shares have lately been giving up some of those gains. They slipped more than 2 percent to close at $635.85 Tuesday. And that leaves them well below the all-time high of $705.07 they reached on Sept. 21 — the day the iPhone 5 debuted.

Why the correction? Tough to say. Clearly, it began when Apple said it sold five million iPhone 5s during the device’s first weekend at market. As impressive as that number might be, it disappointed Wall Street analysts, who had been expecting a few million more. Since then, concerns about limited iPhone 5 inventory have stoked fears that Apple might not be able to fully meet demand during the holiday quarter. And labor issues at Foxconn, the company’s manufacturing partner, have only made matters worse.

Despite these concerns, analysts believe that this is only a brief stumble, and Apple shares will rally again. And with the much-anticipated iPad mini nearing launch, that does seem likely.

“We believe concerns are overdone and this appears to be a typical consolidation after a big run,” says Sterne Agee’s Shaw Wu. “From our supply chain checks, demand remains robust with improving production and the bottleneck moving to assembly of the iPhone 5 itself vs. component constraints. In addition, we are picking up much increased component activity with what appears to be for an iPad mini.”

The stock closed off more than 2 percent on heavier-than-usual trading volume, continuing the slide that began after the technology giant released disappointing iPhone 5 sales figures.

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The San Francisco company reported preliminary third-quarter results that fell below expectations, and lowered its full-year outlook. In early morning trading, shares were down as much as 19 percent, and are now off about 17 percent, trading around $2.35 a share. That’s getting close to an 80 percent drop since the company went public at $10 a share in December.

At that time, Zynga was a Wall Street darling. It was dominating the Facebook charts, and easily raised $1 billion in an IPO. Now, its Ville-style games are struggling, as users shift their habits to mobile and away from games that emphasize major investments in time and expression, such as farm- and city-building.

Zynga still has a large cash balance, but has failed to use those reserves to make smart acquisitions. For instance, the hasty acquisition of OMGPOP earlier this year was intended to aid the company’s move to mobile, but now it is coming back to haunt it. Yesterday, the company estimated it will have to take an impairment charge between $85 million and $95 million in connection with the acquisition, representing about half of the purchase price.

Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Equity Research, said Zynga will unveil its cost-reduction plans on Oct. 24, when full earnings are released. On his wish list of expenses to slash was research and development costs, as Zynga begins to publish more third-party titles and transitions away from first-party game development.

Pachter lowered Zynga’s price target to $4 a share from $7, but justified maintaining his “outperform” rating, since the stock is trading close to cash. “We believe there is significant upside, so we concluded that only a price target revision is warranted,” he wrote in a note to investors.

Colin Sebastian of Baird Equity Research was not as kind, downgrading the stock to “neutral,” while lowering his price target to $3 from $6. “While the company’s over-dependence on Facebook and ongoing headwinds in user monetization are no secret, the magnitude of the Q4 miss heightens our platform concerns, and we are moving to the sidelines until there is more tangible evidence of a successful turnaround in the offing,” Baird said.

Facebook’s stock also is trading lower today, on fears that its revenues will drop along with its largest partner. This morning, Facebook’s shares were down about 2.5 percent, trading around $21.38 a share. Electronic Arts, which also has significant investments in social gaming, is also slightly off in morning trading.

Apple shares, which closed Friday afternoon at an all-time high of $663.22, spiked to $680.87 in early trading on Monday — a new record high. At that price, Apple’s market cap rests at about $638.3 billion — yet another record. And with the next iteration of the company’s iPhone and a new, smaller iPad expected to debut in the weeks ahead, there are very likely more records in the offing.

Companies normally get a lift when they exceed estimates, but in this case, investor confidence has been so low that some think a meet will be enough to change the tide.

“We expect Zynga to deliver in-line 2Q bookings, which we think is enough to move the stock higher given sentiment in the name remains weak,” according to a note sent on Monday by J.P. Morgan analysts.

Yesterday, Zynga’s stock closed at $5.09 a share, up 6 percent for the day, but down 63 percent over the past four months.

For the second quarter, analysts are estimating bookings of $345 million and non-GAAP earnings per share of six cents a share, representing little to no growth over the previous quarter, when it reported a profit of six cents a share, excluding some items, on bookings of $329 million.

Bookings are what Zynga actually sells in the quarter versus revenue, which is amortized over multiple quarters. It reports these two figures because virtual goods are perceived as having a long shelf life. Bookings are often considered a better measure for how the company did during the immediate period.

Over the past five years, the company has become the largest game maker on Facebook, attracting 292 million users in 175 countries, based on producing hit games such as FarmVille, CityVille and Words With Friends. But as Facebook’s growth has plateaued (which has also been a problem for its own stock), investors have become concerned that Zynga won’t be able to keep accelerating as fast as it once did.

Last month, the company revealed its upcoming plans at Unleashed, which included the announcement of new games such as The Ville and FarmVille 2, a sequel to one of its most popular games. It also talked about its strategy for becoming a publisher of third-party game titles across both Facebook and mobile, but generally, it wasn’t enough to get investors excited enough to buy.

Since then, the company’s CEO Mark Pincus has been eager to talk about the company’s goal of achieving one billion people playing its games.

Last quarter, Zynga warned that it expects slower sequential growth in the first half of the year, with most of its growth weighted toward the second half.  For the full year, Zynga is projecting non-GAAP earnings of 23 cents to 29 cents a share on bookings in the range of $1.4 billion to $1.5 billion. Tomorrow, analysts will be looking closely to see if those projections have changed.

J.P. Morgan suggested that concerns over the company’s growth rates are overblown, and is slightly more bullish than the consensus. Based on information from AppData, which tracks the popularity of apps on Facebook, J.P. Morgan says that the number of people playing Zynga’s games on a daily basis has increased 2 percent quarter over quarter. Additionally, it noted that data only paints one piece of the picture, because AppData doesn’t take into account how many users come from mobile, and that mobile accounted for one-third of Zynga’s total daily users last quarter.

One concern that multiple analysts mentioned was Zynga’s staggered lock-up expirations. Since going public, the number of shares available to trade has increased to 600 million from 100 million, and by mid-August, the so-called float should jump to around 800 million shares. More shares will mean having to please even more investors.

ZNGA data by YCharts

The social game company’s shares are now officially down 50 percent from its December public offering when it sold shares for $10 apiece to raise $1 billion.

Its troubles can be blamed on a number of factors, including Facebook’s poor public performance and persisting questions on how both companies — Facebook and Zynga — will be able to gracefully transition from the Web to mobile.

But at least this time Zynga’s steep decline doesn’t seem to be tied to Facebook, which was up 1.5 percent, or 40 cents today, to close at $27.40 a share. And, as Kara Swisher pointed out earlier today, many public tech companies continue to perform well.

Forbes reported that Cowen analyst Doug Creutz warned in a research note today that new data suggests game playing on Facebook is in an “accelerating user tailspin.” Additionally, he said that Zynga’s daily active users were down 8.2 percent in May, the second consecutive significant month-over-month drop, “with nearly all of the company’s major titles declining significantly.”

In an interview on CNBC, Creutz elaborated, saying there were two reasons he was concerned: First, over the past few months, Zynga accelerated the number of game launches, but because the games were not substantially different, players jumped from one game to the next too easily. Second, while Zynga is aggressively going after the mobile games market, it’s still uncertain if it will be successful in making the transition.

To that end, Zynga announced a partnership with Enrique Iglesias and Jennifer Lopez to help promote the company’s recently acquired Draw Something game.

Zynga was criticized for overpaying for Draw Something’s creator OMGPOP because almost immediately after paying $180 million for it, the game started to lose its appeal. The game is now Zynga’s third largest on Facebook, with 5.6 million daily active players, down from 14.4 million at the time of the sale.

Still, the game could make a comeback, especially as Zynga begins to put its full force behind the indie production.

Zynga said it was launching Draw Something in 12 new languages, including Chinese, Korean and Japanese. To assist in the international launch, players will be able to select the “JLo Enrique” feature to unlock special words that they will have to draw.

Both artists have agreed to engage players of Draw Something on Twitter during the week-long promotion in the lead-up to their North American tour, starting July 14.

Apparently the final reassurance analysts and investors were looking for was that the company is indeed still growing.

Despite taking several measures over the past couple of months in the wake of an awkward fourth-quarter earnings revision, Groupon has not been able to regain investor confidence and has watched its stock price slowly dwindle to half its IPO price of $20 a share.

Today, the company’s stock opened at $14.93 a share before settling at $12.17 at the close, up 3.7 percent.

At least two analysts were bullish on yesterday’s first-quarter results, upgrading Groupon’s stock to a buy.

Sterne Agee upgraded Groupon from neutral to a buy and set a price target of $20. In a note to investors, analysts Arvind Bhatia and Brett Strauser wrote that the strong first quarter “alleviated several concerns,” including Groupon’s ability to have operating leverage. An additional plus, they wrote, is that the stock is trading so far below its IPO price.

Likewise, Mark Mahaney from Citi wrote that “we’ll grab this deal,” and upgraded the stock to a buy with a $22 price target. Four factors drove his decision: 33 percent quarter-over-quarter revenue growth in North America, international margins turning positive for the first time, marketing spending declining for the fourth quarter in a row and the very low stock price.

As my colleague Ina Fried reported yesterday, Groupon’s first-quarter revenues topped the company’s prior forecast as well as analyst expectations, totaling $559.3 million during the period, compared with $295.5 million a year ago. Operating income was $39.6 million, including an expense of $28 million related to non-cash stock-based compensation.

The strong results helped overshadow the company’s previous follies, which included the financial revision in the fourth quarter due to higher than expected holiday returns and the disclosure that auditors had determined it had a material weakness in its financial processes.

In a conference call with analysts, Groupon’s CFO Jason Child, who is under fire over the gaffes, said: “There’s some specific tasks that we have implemented and are going to implement. We’ve certainly added some people, and have some more work there. We have 48 countries and so we do have accounting personnel and controllers in every single country.”

In addition, Groupon has taken several precautions over the past couple of months to ensure the mishaps won’t happen again.

For example, Groupon has hired Kal Raman to build out the company’s internal controls and processes as the SVP of Americas. He previously held executive roles at Amazon, eBay and Drugstore.com. Groupon also nominated two new members with accounting prowess to the board and has been working on its financial controls.

Child said that since being tripped by holiday returns, the company has implemented a more granular statistical model that maps returns on a weekly basis.

“From a process standpoint we are in good shape, and there’s some technology that is especially helpful with a company like ours,” he said. “We made a lot of progress this quarter, and will make a lot of progress next quarter, and hopefully in the next quarter or two, we’ve done all the steps necessary.”

Groupon’s auditors won’t review whether the company has rectified its financial processes until the end of the year, so even if the company moves faster the label will remain.

In a recent letter to shareholders, Groupon’s CEO Andrew Mason said he did not have regrets on moving too fast.

“Although there are risks in moving too fast, companies often don’t survive long enough to apologize for moving too slow,” Mason writes. “Perhaps more importantly, by moving quickly, we reached a scale that has helped us solidify our market leadership, and accumulated data that is enabling our future and helping us continuously improve the experience of our customers.”

The daily deal company’s shares slid 3.3 percent, or 34 cents, to settle at $9.97 a share today, marking the first time its stock closed in single digits.

At that price, the company’s value hovers around $6.4 billion, which is getting uncomfortably close to Google’s $6 billion buyout offer that the Chicago company turned down in late 2010.

Groupon has been unable to regain investor confidence since revising its fourth-quarter results at the end of March despite putting out a string of press releases. Over the past couple of weeks, it has hired a new SVP, Kal Raman, and appointed two new directors with accounting expertise.

Today, it sold a package that included a pair of tickets to see New Kids on the Block, a ride on a roller coaster with the teen heartthrobs and round-trip airfare, among other activities, for $10,000, or roughly half off.

Now Groupon is also half off. (I’m pretty sure the NKOTB’s lyrics “Hangin’ Tough” can apply.)

At less than $10 a share, Groupon’s stock is 50 percent below its IPO price of $20 a share.

For CEO Andrew Mason, it means watching his shares decrease from $1.3 billion at the stock’s peak on day one to roughly $470 million today.

GRPN data by YCharts

Because of that, Zynga’s stock is soaring today, trading up 16.5 percent, or $1.75 a share, at $12.35, to easily beat its 52-week high of $11.50.

Up until today, Zynga’s stock had struggled to stay at its IPO price of $10 a share.

Baird Equity Research analyst Colin Sebastian tried to do some backward math based on Facebook’s disclosure yesterday that 12 percent of its revenue was coming from the social games company.

Based on that alone, we know that Zynga accounted for roughly $450 million of Facebook’s $3.7 billion revenue in 2011.

But Sebastian took it a step further and estimated that, based on Facebook’s 20 percent jump in payment revenue during the fourth quarter, Zynga’s net bookings likely totaled $315 million in Q4, versus the $300 million he was previously forecasting.

He maintained the company’s “outperform” rating on the stock, and a $12 price target.

Here’s how he did the math:

We estimate that 12% of Facebook revenues came from Zynga in Q4, which implies roughly $135 million in Zynga-related revenues. We assume 75-80% of this amount is fees related to virtual good sales, with the remainder coming from advertising. Adjusting this amount for the 30% toll, we estimate implied net bookings to Zynga of nearly $250 million from virtual good transactions on Facebook. We estimate that Zynga also generated roughly $65 million in Facebook advertising bookings and transactions on other platforms (e.g., iOs, Android), which would suggest total net bookings of $315 million vs. our estimate of $300 million. Again, this a rough estimate and a directional indicator based on Facebook filings.

At one point today, the stock dipped as low as $7.97 a share before closing at $8 even.

At that price, it is $2 below it’s initial stock price of $10, and has lost at least 20 percent of its market value in less than a month.

But why?

The San Francisco social games company has launched at least two new games since going public, and over the past few days, no harsh analyst report has come out with a negative rating.

It appears the once high-flying Silicon Valley company — known for addictive games on Facebook like FarmVille and CityVille, and mobile games like Words With Friends — is having a hard time gaining the market’s confidence.

To be sure, there’s no clear answer for the price drop; and other tech companies that recently went public, such as Groupon or LinkedIn, have experienced their own fluctuations. But there is one theory making the rounds.

Analysts and other sources suspect Zynga’s stock has been propped up over the past month by the underwriters, who agreed to buy shares if the stock started to perform poorly. The stock purchases would have created steady demand for the stock and kept the price relatively stable.

Furthermore, the theory goes, the underwriters have since met their obligations for buying the stock, and therefore are are no longer buying as many shares.

Incidentally, on Friday, Morgan Stanley — one of Zynga’s underwriters — disclosed that it had purchased nearly 16 million shares in December.

But while the disclosure, filed with the with the Securities & Exchange Commission, adds fuel to the theory, it is unclear if those shares were purchased as part of the IPO, or if they were spread out throughout the month.

Zynga declined to comment, citing its quiet period.

Still, whatever the reason for the drop, Zynga’s shares are seeing less demand.

As recently as last week, the stock was trading at $9.45 a share, but since then, it has struggled to stay above $9. On Friday, it lost 12 cents; today, it lost 81 cents, or 9 percent.

But even if the underwriting theory is on the mark, it doesn’t explain the broader question of why Zynga’s stock price is falling. Shouldn’t there be other investors who are willing to buy up a piece of Zynga?

Unfortunately, it seems the market isn’t sure what to do with the stock, or how to value it.

A social games company fits somewhere between traditional game makers, like Electronic Arts and Activision; and an Internet stock, like Google or LinkedIn.

Zynga gives away its games for free, but still manages to be profitable from selling virtual goods, such as a tractor or more power-ups, that a small number of players elect to purchase inside the games.

It’s also heavily reliant upon Facebook, which could be another problem. Facebook, too, operates privately, and reveals only as much information about its business as it has to — at least until it files to go public, which could be later this year.

In all likelihood, many of these investor fears could be settled when Zynga reports its first period as a public company. No word on when that will be yet, but the fourth-quarter report should come as soon as this month, and no later than February.

As the father of eight kids — now all between the ages of 12 and 21 — he knows a thing or two about the importance of finding the perfect place. (Note: Kaufer delicately calls family trips “adventures,” while getaways with his wife are “vacations.”)

Since then, TripAdvisor has become the online go-to destination for reviews of hotels from Barbados to bed-and-breakfasts in New York City.

In 2004, Kaufer sold the company to IAC for $210 million, setting off a somewhat complicated operating journey. A year later, TripAdvisor spun out of IAC as part of Expedia. It remained a division within the online travel agency until last month, when it broke off into an independent publicly held company.

Today, the Newton, Mass.-based company has 1,100 employees, attracts more than 50 million unique visitors and has published more than 60 million reviews. It trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “TRIP,” while Expedia continues to trade under the symbol “EXPE.”

Kaufer talked to AllThingsD about being an independently traded company, and about the media company’s prospects for growth:

AllThingsD: What is it like to be out from under Expedia’s wing?

Stephen Kaufer: There was a joke when we were spun out as part of Expedia from IAC. People asked me, “What’s your vision for TripAdvisor?” I would always say, “I want to be bigger than Expedia,” and people’s response always was, “That’s what the little brother might say.”

A year or two ago, we passed Expedia in comScore metrics, and are still experiencing growth. It’s a free service that’s valuable. It’s worldwide. TripAdvisor is in 21 languages, and three-fourths of the traffic comes from outside of the U.S.

Now that you are out from under Expedia, do you have more flexibility on where you send leads that are generated from people reading reviews on TripAdvisor?

Under Expedia, we had no obligation to send traffic to them … That never happened, and we were allowed to run independently. But at the end of the day, they [competitors] knew their marketing spend was going into Expedia’s pocket. That’s the most exciting thing. We are now completely independent. Expedia now owns no stock, so when I talk to Orbitz or Priceline, these folks can now partner with TripAdvisor without any hint of helping to fuel the competitors.

Why the spinoff now?

It was announced back in April, but basically there was a view that there was a class of investors that liked a pure Internet category leader and a fast-growing media company like TripAdvisor, and there’s another class that appreciates Expedia, which is in the dominant online travel agency position.

We were blurring the two when they were together. It gives Wall Street the opportunity to invest in either, and each company will find its own set of investors.

Do you think Wall Street is correctly valuing TripAdvisor? (The stock failed to come roaring out of the gate.)

No. But I’m not complaining. I think Wall Street, over the next couple of quarters, will appreciate how both companies perform as independent companies. The numbers have been a little hidden because they were jumbled together. … They’ve never seen TripAdvisor operate independently. They ask, “What will you do differently? How will things be the same?” Watch us, and I think you’ll like what you see.

Will you grow mostly organically, or through M&A?

We have a good track record on acquisition and product innovation.

The last few acquisitions, you saw a focus on our strategic priorities: A mobile company, a social company, two vacation rental companies and a company in China. Our four key investment areas that we called out are vacation rentals, mobile, social and geographic expansion.

In many ways, TripAdvisor was one of the original social networks, where users shared information on their vacations. Now you see Facebook getting into the space with Facebook Connect and other initiatives, too.

Everyone feels like being able to get travel recommendations from their friends is a natural evolution for getting a better recommendation, period.

There’s a couple of different angles. Some social travel companies are focused on making planning a group trip easier. No site out there has scale and does that well, and we don’t do that now. Facebook is a great platform to do it on, and it may be interesting to us in the future.

Our focus is leveraging the friend graph on Facebook and our rich content to give someone the experience of seeing recommendations or ratings from friends.

We love the concept, and we are furiously building up our own product offering to make it more valuable. If it’s not too early to call someone a leader, we are clearly it, because we have the content and the friend graph. We aren’t a site that’s based on Facebook, which is an advantage, because you can do anyting you want to do on the Web or the tablet or mobile.

What about Google moving into travel?

They have a couple of different approaches. They have Google Places, which reviews everything; and they have Google Hotels, which is a hotel finder; and then Google Flights, to help you find the best fare.

With Google Places, they still can’t seem to generate enough high-quality reviews to be useful. They compete with Yelp and us, and I’ve yet to be concerned. I was concerned about Google Flights — a lot — before they launched, but you cannot book through an online travel agent like Expedia — only directly through the airlines for now.

It’s an incomplete product, so I still use TripAdvisor flights, or go to Expedia or Orbitz. They get better results, and maybe aren’t as fast, but more information is still better.

They say they want to include online travel agents, but the airlines won’t let them. … Don’t mistake my tone for being sympathetic to Google on this one.

What about vacation rentals? HomeAway went public last year.

After HomeAway, there’s not that much.

We agree it’s a great market, and it deserves to be online. It helps consumers and there’s a need to bring a trust element into the equation. Folks who have tried it have liked (renting homes), and a whole lot of people haven’t tried it, because a hotel is all they’ve ever tried.

If they are reading hotel reviews, but I see that you are trying to stay seven nights in Orlando, I might say, “Did you know that you might be able to save money and get a private swimming pool?” They never would have thought of that as an opportunity, but there’s lots of great opportunities in Orlando and tons of other cities.

HomeAway dominates the category, but there’s plenty of room for a second, third and fourth.

I’m surprised that already three-fourths of your traffic comes from outside the U.S.

Yes, and that portion is growing. We have offices all over the globe, and our biggest investment opportunity is in China. We purchased a metasearch site for air, hotel and train in China. We view international growth as a tailwind to the business.

So what’s your price target for the stock? It’s currently trading around $25 a share.

I’m looking at how I can grow the business over the long term, and that’s why we are making some of these investments. I might be ahead of it, or other folks ahead of me, but I’m a nuts-and-bolts operator. I like to build stuff, and getting TripAdvisor to the next level of functionality and awareness is my priority — not the stock price.

Last week, the Facebook game company sold 100 million shares at $10 apiece to raise $1 billion.

On its first day of trading, the stock fell 5 percent, and its losses are even deeper today. In early morning trading, the stock was down nearly 8 percent, or 73 cents, to trade at $8.77 a share. UPDATE: The stock ended up falling 48 cents, or 5 percent, to close at $9.02 a share.

No anti-wither serum exists in the real world to revive a stock price the way virtual crops can be revitalized in FarmVille, one of the game-maker’s hit titles.

Zynga is not the only recent Internet darling to take a nosedive.

It took a while longer, but about a month after Groupon went public, its stock tumbled and was trading for less than half its first-day high of $30 a share. Groupon has since rebounded, but it is also trading lower today, at $22.47 a share.

Zynga has not see those wild fluctuations yet.

Still, the losses do add up — at least on paper. Both the company’s public valuation and some of its largest shareholders’ shares are quickly dwindling in value.

The company is now trading at a valuation of $6.1 billion, down from its IPO valuation of $10 billion. Other big game companies, like Electronic Arts, are now more valuable, albeit only slightly higher.

Investors like Morgan Stanley are seeing their stakes drift further and further underwater.

Earlier this year, Morgan Stanley, which was also one of the Zynga’s underwriters in its IPO, 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.

Morgan Stanley’s stake is now worth only $46.5 million.

The dip is also hurting Zynga founder and CEO Mark Pincus’s stake, which is now worth less than $1 billion, or roughly $982.5 million.

One thing the company can look forward to is its first-quarter earnings, which will come out early next year and should be bolstered by a strong fourth-quarter performance. In the quarter, Zynga launched new games, including CastleVille, on Facebook, as well as some standalone titles for iPhone; the fourth quarter is typically strong because players have a little more free time to play — and pay — during the holidays.

Its shares closed today down nine percent, settling at $15.24 after bouncing off a new low of $14.85. That’s less than half the $31.14 that some investors paid at the stock’s high point, just after it went public in early November. More recently, it has been trading in the low to mid-$20s.

The drop is especially painful because it puts the company’s market valuation below $10 billion.

The high-flying media darling was once the talk of the town, quickly snubbing Google’s $6 billion buyout offer and then rumored to be seeking a public valuation of $25 billion.

But the Chicago-based company faced several controversies in its lead-up to the offering. It lost high-ranking executives and more than once was forced by regulators to change the way it reported its finances.

Still, on IPO day, all the fuss seemed to be over and done.

Groupon priced its shares at $20, several dollars above the expected price range of $16 to $18, and ended up raising $700 million at a valuation of close to $13 billion. That was just shy of its initial goal of raising $750 million.

Today’s stock dive during one of the headiest times of the year for shopping may show that the enthusiasm was misguided, although some of its social media peers are also trading down.

However, since its public debut, Groupon has failed to make a big splash of any kind. A major new feature, which is key to delivering relevant offers to the right consumers, was lamely supported by an amateurish YouTube video featuring two product guys. And today, the company didn’t really feature anything special for Cyber Monday except for offering discounts on a few recommended gifts. Meanwhile, its next closest competitor, LivingSocial, pulled out all the stops by offering gift cards to major online retailers, such as one from Blue Nile that gave shoppers the opportunity to spend $200 for $100.

If anyone felt today’s drop it was Groupon CEO Andrew Mason, who did not return emails seeking comment.

Mason, who was at least temporarily worth around $1.3 billion back on Nov. 4 when the company went public, is now worth somewhere closer to $715 million.

Today it is among the most valuable companies in the world, riding high on record sales of a string of hit products that have redefined personal technology and our expectations for it. In just the first three quarters of this year alone, Apple has already racked up record sales of nearly $80 billion. By year’s end they’ll likely top $100 billion.

Something to keep in mind today as the market reacts to the sad news of Jobs’s passing.

But amid the inevitable volatility in Apple’s share price the next few days, remember this: Jobs’s absence will likely have no measurable impact on Apple’s financial performance for the foreseeable future, if ever. But his legacy of innovation will — and for years to come. As I’ve written before, it’s Apple, not the iPod, iPhone or iPad, that is Jobs’s masterpiece product, a company designed to set the bar for the industry, regardless of whether he’s leading it or not.

As Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster wrote in a note to clients late Wednesday, “We believe the ethos of Steve Jobs, his vision and his work ethic, will forever drive Apple. As such, we reiterate, without hesitation, our Overweight rating on [the company's shares]. We believe Tim Cook is the ideal candidate to continue the work of the irreplaceable Steve Jobs. … While there may be concerns among investors as to whether or not Cook can continue Jobs’ streak of innovation, we believe there is no better candidate to lead the company Jobs co-founded. And in many ways, it will be Jobs and his deeply rooted vision that will always guide Apple and its leaders.”

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Steve Jobs Full Coverage »

Doubtlessly, in some business tome to come, it will all be depicted in glorious detail.

And here are three real-life scenes where BoomTown would desperately have loved to be a fly on the wall:

First: The boardroom perusal of the contents of the eight-page letter from former Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) outside contractor Jodie Fisher, sent to former CEO Mark Hurd, which set in motion the circumstances of his ouster–including the odd investigation into that personal relationship that only managed to turn up dicey expense reports.

Second: The welcome-to-the company-and-screw-HP pep talk that Oracle (ORCL) CEO Larry Ellison delivered to Hurd in appointing him co-president and also a director of the database giant.

And third: The furious HP board racing to the door to file a lawsuit against Hurd for the move.

What happens next should be interesting, especially since the idea of settlement has never been one of the tools in Ellison’s wheelhouse, who is doubtlessly egging Hurd on here.

And, after yet another curveball thrown up by Hurd, it is probably not what HP’s board is angling for either.

But perhaps–after all this mishegas–it is precisely what the tech giant should do, focusing instead on finding a new leader to compete with challenges from companies, such as, well…Oracle.

As it was obligated to do, the lawsuit that HP has filed runs through all the typical charges in cases such as this–almost all of which center on the use of confidential information and how Hurd was paid off not to do exactly what he has done.

It certainly is a lot of money–estimated to be about $35 million, depending on HP’s stock price–and hinges on a two-year confidentiality agreement Hurd agreed to.

HP is correctly avoiding any noncompete language, since California–the state where both Oracle and HP are based–shoots holes in those kinds of defenses.

Instead, as it noted in its lawsuit, HP alleges that Hurd “cannot perform his job at Oracle without disclosing or utilizing HP’s trade secrets and confidential information.”

Of course he cannot, but this should not keep HP’s board from settling, as much as it will pain it to do.

Such a move could not have been helped by Ellison’s typically outrageous remarks about how HP treated Hurd, calling the break between them “the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago.”

And then yesterday’s statement by Ellison: “By filing this vindictive lawsuit against Oracle and Mark Hurd, the HP board is acting with utter disregard for that partnership, our joint customers, and their own shareholders and employees. The HP Board is making it virtually impossible for Oracle and HP to continue to cooperate and work together in the IT marketplace.”

Of course, that’s just the kind of let’s-go-to-the-mattresses noise that HP needs to ignore, now that the longtime partners are clear rivals after Oracle’s $7.4 billion acquisition of computer maker Sun Microsystems.

This purchase put Oracle directly into the server and data-storage-systems business for the first time.

That’s the real reality for HP–and not the delicious “Real Housewives of Silicon Valley” reality show this has turned into.

And–as much as I would like to see Ellison upending a table onto HP board member Marc Andreessen–no amount of legal and public wrangling with Hurd is going to change that.

If it could not work with him any longer–a corporate psychodrama about which there is still much unsaid–HP needs to move on.

Of course, Hurd should not get off for manipulating the bad situation so deftly either, and perhaps should offer to return some, if not all, of the severance paid for his silence.

Or, it could all just come out in open court and give the world a glimpse into all the twisty machinations that got us here.

Which, as you might imagine, is just fine by me–although not so much for the shareholders of HP.

Aside from that, the only thing worthy of remark seems to be Apple’s plans for expansion in China. The company intends to open 25 stores in that country over the next two years. At the moment, Apple (AAPL) has a single store in Beijing and at least two others planned for Shanghai, including one at the Shanghai World Financial Center, so the company’s ambitions in the country are aggressive.

With good reason. Mac sales in China increased nearly 100 percent year over year in the first financial quarter of 2010. And while iPhone sales got off to a slow start, they’re ramping up. As of early January, China Unicom, Apple’s carrier partner in China, had activated some 200,000 iPhones.

Clearly, China is a country of enormous potential for Apple as COO Tim Cook noted during Apple’s January earnings call. “We have just really got going in China.” he said. “I really like what I see so far. Although the average income is not nearly as high as perhaps the United States and some other western European markets, there is a significant size middle class….”

The proof is in the numbers. “In fact,” as Cook noted, “if you look at greater China last quarter, which is China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, our revenues tripled year-over-year in that geography which is I think phenomenal by any measure. We have a tremendous focus on it.”

Consider this from J.P. Morgan analyst Rod Hall: “No matter how good the product, we believe that penetrating the channel will continue to be difficult for Palm and will only get tougher as more competitive touch handsets come to market through the year.”

And this from UBS analyst Maynard Um: “Demand weakness is not necessarily a surprise as we noted earlier that a slowing US net add environment would likely have the greatest impact on Palm given its small base. However, the magnitude is slightly surprising to us given management’s prior conviction & visibility to orders. While Palm cites deferral of orders to future periods, WebOS demand will likely be called into question. With the US market being Palm’s best opportunity for more levered growth, we are more concerned with the future growth opportunity.”

Finally, there’s this from Deutsche Bank analyst Jonathan Goldberg, who says it’s going to take a long, long time for Palm’s fundamentals to improve, given its weak traction in the smartphone market: “Our concern now is that bad publicity feeds on itself, with the poor stock price performance denting Palm’s brand and causing potential carrier partners to lose interest,” he wrote in a note to clients.

“There are also potential upside risks as well including the potential for Palm to be acquired, but we think the poor showing to date limits the company’s negotiating leverage,” Goldberg added. Ultimately, we think Palm has the resources to survive and potentially build its position back, but it will take considerable time and they face serious risks in the interim.”

Serious risks, indeed. If Palm (PALM) has fared this poorly in the smartphone market of 2009, how will it fare in the smartphone market of 2010 and the more formidable rivals the year brings with it?

It was hard enough to compete against Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone and RIM’s (RIMM) BlackBerry last year. In 2010, Palm must compete with these popular smartphones and a host of new Android phones, not to mention some impressive Windows Mobile 7 devices heading to market. No easy task, particularly when carrier partners like Verizon (VZ) and Sprint (S) don’t quite seem to be giving Palm devices the marketing push they need to succeed.

That works out to $24 per share in cash for iPCS. This is a 34 percent premium over the company’s closing price of $17.88 per share on Friday, but perhaps a small price to pay for putting an end to the two iPCS lawsuits–one over Sprint’s acquisition of Virgin Mobile, the other over its investment in Wimax operator Clearwire.

As a result of the iPCS deal, Sprint (S) will no longer be required to divest its iDen network in certain iPCS (IPCS) territories, though iPCS had won a court ruling requiring Sprint to do so. Now, Sprint will not only keep those assets, it can peddle their services to some 700,000 iPCS customers in a territory that covers 81 markets in seven states.

Below, the official announcement:

Sprint Nextel to Acquire Wireless Affiliate iPCS, Inc.

More than 700,000 PCS Wireless Users and 270,000 Wholesale Customers to Become Sprint Direct Subscribers
Extends Company’s Direct Service Territory to an Additional 12.6 Million People
Sprint Ends Plan to Divest iDEN Network Assets in Certain Midwestern States Pending Transaction Close
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. & SCHAUMBURG, Ill.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Oct. 19, 2009– Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) and iPCS, Inc. (NASDAQ: IPCS) today announced an agreement for Sprint Nextel to acquire iPCS for approximately $831 million, including the assumption of $405 million of net debt. This transaction value represents 6.4x projected 2010 Adjusted Earnings Before Income, Taxes, and Depreciation (“Adjusted EBITDA”*). Sprint expects to achieve approximately $30 million of synergies annually in the transaction and expects the transaction to be free cash flow accretive to Sprint in 2010.

Under the terms of the agreement, Sprint Nextel will commence a cash tender offer to acquire all of iPCS’ outstanding common shares for $24.00 per share. This price per share represents a 34 percent premium to iPCS’ closing stock price as of October 16, 2009. The agreement also requires a minimum of a majority of the shares outstanding (on a fully-diluted basis) to be tendered in the offer. Following completion of the tender offer, any remaining shares of iPCS will be acquired in a cash merger at the same price per share. Shareholders with approximately 9.5 percent of the outstanding common shares of iPCS have already agreed to tender their shares pursuant to the tender offer and to vote their shares in favor of the merger.

The acquisition is subject to customary regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions, and is expected to be completed either late in the fourth quarter of 2009 or early 2010. As part of the agreement, Sprint Nextel and iPCS will seek an immediate stay of all pending litigation between the parties with a final resolution to become effective upon closing of the acquisition.

As a result, Sprint will no longer be required to divest its iDEN network in certain iPCS territories and will terminate its previously announced divestiture process pending closing of the transaction.

iPCS’s services are sold under the Sprint brand name and in Sprint-branded stores. Because of the nearly seamless marketing and sales relationship between Sprint and iPCS, customers should not experience any change in their service as a result of this transaction.

“Acquiring iPCS brings added value to Sprint by expanding our direct customer base, growing our direct coverage area and simplifying our business operations,” said Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint Nextel. “Customers in iPCS territory will see a seamless transition and continue to enjoy a superb customer experience.”

“We are very pleased to have reached this agreement with Sprint Nextel. Given the increasingly competitive landscape, we believe this is an opportune time to provide our shareholders with a liquidity event at a very attractive price. iPCS shareholders will receive a significant and immediate premium for their shares and our customers will continue to receive the same excellent service from the same dedicated people who provide that service today,” said Timothy M. Yager, president and CEO of iPCS. “We look forward to working with the Sprint Nextel team to ensure a smooth completion of the transaction and transition in the coming months.”