On late Wednesday, January 27, consumer electronics giant Apple (AAPL) surpassed its Wall Street's targets for the holiday quarter. Strong sales of the iPhone 12s certainly contributed to the strong revenues, apart from the sales of wearables and other services.

But despite this performance, Apple stock quick went down in extended trading just hours after the news.

Apple Earnings Beyond Expectations, But Stock Fell 

Apple, the California-based tech company earned $1.68 per share on sales of $111.44 billion in its fiscal first quarter ended Dec. 26.

This is noticeably higher than what analysts expected the company to earn. Analysts anticipated earnings of $1.41 a share on sales of $103.28 billion, as reported by Investors.com. 

Based on a year-over-year basis, Apple earnings increased by 34%. At the same time, sales climbed 21%. These are all good news, and not supposed to lead to stock prices going down. But the unexpected certainly happened. 

During the after-hours trading on the stock market today, Apple stock was quite unpredictable -  going through a series of modest gains and losses. During the recent trades, Apple stock went down by 1%, near 140.70. Moreover, during the regular session, Apple stock fell 0.8% to 142.06.

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Facebook Hits Apple with a Rebuke 

Meanwhile, Facebook also showed an expected high. It capped the COVID-19 year with soaring earnings in the final quarter, which is naturally good news. However, 2021 so far has been quite unkind to it.

After being hit by several criticisms about its privacy policies, it is now hitting back at Apple for daring to litmit its ad targeting capabilities. 

Facebook forecasted several challenges it might have to address this year, including a privacy update wherein Apple could limit how it performs its ad targeting. 

Fans of the two companies saw a rare moment taking place as through a confederence call, the Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, accused Apple of only caring for its own interests while marginalizing the needs of the users. 

Facebook maintained that its ad targeting capabilities should not be limited. For one, it is the reason why people were able to cope with staying at home all the time.

The company stated that its already enormous user base further expanded in the fourth quarter because people were compelled to stay home  and stay safe. They use their phones more and therefore, Facebook more.

The social networking site reported revenues boosted by an understandable shift to digital advertising while the world grapples with COVID-19-related economic uncertainty.

Apple will soon require apps to ask users for permission to gather data on what devices they are using and to let ads continue to follow them around on the internet. 

Facebook has incessantly resist and push back against the changes, saying those rules could lessen what apps can make if they post ads through Facebook's audience network. 

"Apple may say that they are doing this to help people, but the moves clearly track their competitive interests," Zuckerberg said. 

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