Icahn takes his Apple stake to near 1% after stock plunges

Activist investor Carl Icahn bought a second lot of Apple shares worth more than $500 million within a week on Tuesday after the company's stock plunged some 8 per cent on Monday.

Earlier last week the billionaire investor increased his stake in the US technology giant by $500 million to $3 billion (See: Carl Icahn raises stake in Apple to $3 bn).

Apple stock plunged following disappointing results announced by the company in Monday's earnings report.

The latest purchase takes Icahn's holding of Apple shares to over $4 billion, or nearly 1 per cent of the company's market cap.

At the current trading range of the stock, Ichan probably would have picked up another 800,000 to 1 million shares.

''Just bought 500 million more $AAPL shares,'' Icahn tweeted on Tuesday.

The acquisition gives him increasing leverage in his quest to pressure the board to up its share buyback programme.

Icahn is urging Apple to spend $50 billion buying back its own stock during the current fiscal year ending in September so as to boost its stock value.

Icahn has repeatedly called for Apple to introduce new product categories this year and Apple CEO Tim Cook too appeared to confirm for that the company would have some big launches before the year-end.

''We're working on things that are things that you see today, but we're working things that... you can't see today,'' Cook said in a conference call to discuss the company's earnings.

Analysts and investors have been urging the company to develop new product categories that could jump start earnings in the same way that the iPhone did in 2007, and the iPad in 2010.

Apple has not introduced any major new products since the iPad, and is expected to launch a new television device, or a wearable computer in 2014. The company is also said to be working on technologies that would its iPhones into mobile payment devices.