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Survey: Apple Not So Hot?

A survey that RBC Capital conducted with Changewave suggests that Apple sales are cooling off. As a result of the survey, RBC Capital analyst Mike Abramsky downgraded his Apple rating on Monday, helping spark the sharpest sell-off in the company's shares in eight years.

RBC's version of the survey showed that the percentage of technology consumers who plan to buy a Mac in the next 90 days had dropped from 34% in August to 29% in September, the biggest such decline in more than two years. ChangeWave's version, which was released Monday, focused on corporate purchase plans. It's based on a survey of 1,947 individuals involved with IT spending within an organization and shows declines in the percentage of companies planning to buy Apple desktop or laptop computers over the next 90 days.

These two bearish signals were enough to persuade Abramsky that it was time to downgrade Apple's shares, from "outperform" to "sector perform." But in the context of the ChangeWave survey, Apple hardly seems to be performing like the rest of its sector. For one thing, Mac purchases have been trending up even as computer purchases across the board have been slumping.

Read the whole story at CNNMoney.com/Fortune »

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