On Monday, Nov 24, 2014, Apple Inc. (AAPL) launched a two-week campaign as part of its efforts to fight AIDS. Shares of Apple were up 1.85% ($2.15) following the news and closed at an all-time high of $118.63.
Per this initiative, the iPhone-maker will donate a substantial portion of retail and online sales to RED, the global nonprofit organization founded by U2's Bono that has a longstanding relationship with the tech company. However, the exact amount of donation was not disclosed by Apple.
As part of the campaign, a special section of Apple's App Store called Apps for RED will offer 25 apps with exclusive content, the proceeds of which will be used to fight AIDS. Further, during the campaign all customers who make the qualifying amount of purchases will be awarded special gift cards. These gift cards can be used on the U.S. iTunes Store, Mac App Store, App Store, or iBooks Store.
Inorder to turn this fund-raising initiative into a success story, Apple recently partnered with some top level companies including the likes of Electronic Arts and Zynga such that their apps may be included in the campaign. Titles featuring in the campaign include the likes of Zynga’s Farmville, EA’s FIFA15 and Sims, Angry Birds and such others. We believe that the company may also rope in famous game developer, King Digital to lure in more users going forward, given the immense popularity of Candy Crush Saga.
We believe that the timing of the campaign is perfect as it will include two of the busiest shopping days in the U.S., Black Friday (Nov 28) and Cyber Monday (Dec 1).
We believe that this endeavor on part of Apple will boost its image as a socially-responsible company, more so in the face of high-profile personal donations and corporate campaigns targeting the recent Ebola crisis from companies including Facebook (FB) and Microsoft (MSFT).
Additionally, it will also help it to combat intensifying competition from the likes of Amazon.com (AMZN), which recently unveiled tech-related shopping deals including discount television sets, cheap e-books and free app bundles.
Per Apple, it has already accumulated nearabout $65 million for RED as part of their joint endeavor to fight against AIDS. We believe that the recently launched initiative will significantly add to this amount.
Currently, Apple sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).
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