That means that Exxon Mobile, with a $385.7 billion-dollar market capitalization, is currently the most valuable company in the world.

Cirrus Logic, however, did put a positive spin on the situation, saying that the decrease was due to a key customer’s migration to a new component. “A key customer,” investors believe, is code for Apple, and the component decreases are evidence that iPad shipments dropped in recent months.

The new drop means that Apple is now more than $300/share down from its high point in September 2012, when the company was worth over $650 billion. And that it has now dropped an absolutely massive $250 billion in value since then — the equivalent of an entire Google or a Microsoft.

Apple’s quarterly results are coming Tuesday, and the company better hope Tim Cook has something that impresses investors. His last effort, a Wall Street “fireside chat” at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet conference in February, fell flat, with Apple stock dropping a further $11/share, or 2.3 percent.

Because if not, the kind of investor revolt that we saw in February led by Greenlight Capital could become the norm, not the exception.

Even if level-headed investors say Apple’s fundamentals are all good.

Image credit: Google Finance

Nothing fundamental has changed about Apple.

The iPhone 5 is selling well, with reports of up to 45 million being sold this quarter (that’s ridiculous, but still). Apple looks to sell a record number of iPads this quarter — perhaps as many as 26 million — and while its desktop sales are suffering a little due to delays in getting the new ultra-thin iMacs to market, there have been no big misses or disasters.

Analysts have had reason to scratch the walls, however.

“Apple stock is significantly more volatile than its earnings and innovation stream,” analyst Daniel Ernst told Reuters.”It makes no sense.”

Part of the problem might be the fact that Apple relies so extensively on two product lines for almost all of its sales and profits. Of $156 billion in sales in 2012, iPhone accounted for $80.5 billion and iPad accounted for $32.4 billion. Add in $5.6 billion of iPod sales, and you’ve got 76 percent of Apple’s total sales.

“Apple faces a problem in that it’s a two-product company today,” Avondale Partners analyst John Bright told Investors.com.

Any significant issues with one of those two products — and iPhone is clearly getting beaten by Android lately — and Apple’s massive revenues and huge profits will fairly instantly disappear.

Another concern might be that Apple insiders are starting to take profits. Bob Mansfield, who was going to retire this year before Scott Forstall left, sold $20 million worth of Apple stock just recently. Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior VP of Internet software and services, sold another $8.76 million worth of Apple stock today. Insiders dumping stock is always a warning sign.

But perhaps the bigger issue is a general investor feeling that the good times can’t keep going forever for Apple. Which is true, in a very general and long-term sense.

But the fact that Apple is trading at only 12 times its earnings while it has total assets of $176 billion including cash on hand and generated over $41 billion in net income and over $50 billion in operating cash flow in fiscal 2012 … is very, very, very odd.

I don’t own any Apple stock — and given VentureBeat’s reporting rules I cannot buy any — but I would think that, come Apple’s financial results for its next quarter, a lot of people will be thinking this would have been a very good buying opportunity.

photo credit: Thomas Hawk via photopin cc

Their success comes even as the major operators have stagnated — the big three have created almost no value at all.

Below is a chart of the stock performance of Apple and RIM, compared to the Nasdaq over the past five years. They’ve grown about 1,500 percent, compared to Nasdaq’s (the blue line) anemic 33 percent. You’ll also see that Sprint (in green) has actually had negative growth. AT&T and Verizon haven’t done much better.

Consider, for a second, the numbers. RIM has a mere 12 million customers, and it’s valued at $65 billion. Sprint has more than 52 million customers — more than quadruple RIM’s count — and yet is is valued at a $24 billion, or less than half. How can that be?

Well, after fees and other costs associated with its business, RIM is reportedly pocketing between $3 and $7 from every user every month — because it’s offering such a compelling service for professionals. More significantly, it shows the value in being able to manage partners. RIM has some 200 carrier partnerships. Few other device companies have mastered this — until now, with Apple.

Whereas RIM started with the business customer, and is moving over to serve the consumer, Apple is doing it the other way around. Apple has played impressively with managing partnerships, first in the music business, but now increasingly, with operators globally. Apple looked like it might go out of business some five years ago. But it’s now valued at $144 billion (and just announced record earnings and revenue).

The operators need to figure out how to exploit their networks more efficiently than just putting calls through. Increasingly, they are doing that, especially abroad. But are they doing it quickly enough? And how are they going to react to the success stories of Apple and RIM?

At our MobileBeat conference Thursday, we’ll be hearing from the operators, as well as some of the representatives and investors related to the device platforms — RIM, Apple, Android and Nokia.

At 9:30am, during our pre-event morning session targeted mainly for developers (note there is a seperate registration for this), we’ll be hearing from Matthew Fix (of Vodafone) and Sattya Mallya (of Orange), two of the more dynamic international carriers.

Then, at 11am, during our venture capital panel, we’ll hear from AT&T’s Rupert Young (pictured left), who leads the company’s business development, including strategic investing and M&A. He’ll be on a panel joined by Rick Segal, of the Blackberry Partner Fund, and Richard Wong of Accel Partners, as well as Shawn Carolan (left below), a managing director at Menlo Ventures. Carolan (left below), who we haven’t announced until today, is backer of TeleNav, a MobileBeat Top 30 mobile companies, which is one of the most popular mobile applications around. On the panel, we’ll be discussing the most attractive areas for investments.

Finally, in what could be our highlight panel, at noon, we’ll have Kleiner Perkins’ Matt Murphy, who is investing in the Apple iPhone ecosystem with the iFund, and Google/Android’s Rich Miner — representing two of the most exciting new entrants.

They’ll be joined by JH Kah, a representative from one of the more dynamic operators around SK Telekom. The Korean carrier now has 20 people in an office here in the valley, and has a $100 million fund it is investing. It’s looking to enter all kinds of areas — even, we hear, bricks and mortar retail. JH Kah (left) is a sharp guy. He says, only half-jokingly, that 3G really stands for “gambling, gaming and girls.” That’s where the money is on phones. The panel will be moderated by Michael Arrington of TechCrunch. It will also include Sam Altman, CEO of Loopt, one of the first social networking companies on the iPhone that exploits GPS. Here again, while Loopt initially signed deals with the major carriers to get distribution. But with the iPhone, the company no longer needs agreements with the carriers to get circulation: It gets distribution directly through the iPhone’s App Store.

The last batch MobileBeat tickets are on sale here.

Finally, thanks to our sponsors, Blackberry Partners Fund, Forum Nokia, Sun Microsoystems, Norwest Venture Partners, Amiando, Zanox, mTouch and Mippin for making this possible. If you’re interested in sponsoring the event, please contact Jacob Mullins.