It's been a rough week for Apple.
The company reported its first sales decline in 13 years last week, bringing to end a decade-plus hot streak. Skittish Wall Streeters reacted by selling off the company's stock en masse, cratering its market value by more than $50 billion.
Typically press-shy Apple CEO Tim Cook visited CNBC's Mad Money with Jim Cramer on Monday night to attempt some damage control and remind everyone that he still runs the richest and most successful company in the world.
SEE ALSO:Apple needs a hot new product, and it can't be another iPhone"I think that's a huge overreaction," Cook said of pessimistic investors. "We just had an incredible quarter by absolute standards."
To put into perspective what a lukewarm quarter means for the world's richest business, the company's $10 billion in profits still eclipsed those of any other business and its revenues dwarf the entire market worth of most Fortune 500 companies.
Cook claims the company is a victim of its own success.
"What we're seeing is that people are upgrading [their iPhones] at a different rate -- a lower rate than they did last year -- but still higher than the year before," Cook said. "So we had this abnormally high upgrade rate last year as people bought into the iPhone 6 and now we're comparing to that."
But fears persist that the market for iPhones -- Apple's biggest-selling product by a huge margin -- is flatlining in developed countries and in China, which accounts for a big chunk of its sales.
Last week, billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn said he planned to sell off his remaining shares in Apple because of concern about an economic slowdown in China.
Critics also worry that Apple's innovation pipeline has been slowing of late and that the company is too reliant on consumer appetites for a single product that constantly needs to be revamped in order to stay relevant.
Cook tried to quell these doubts by assuring Cramer that the tech giant will once again be the source of the Next Big Thing in consumer electronics as it has been with the iPod and the iPhone.
"We're going to give you things that you can't live without that you just don't know about today," Cook assured Cramer. "That has always been the objective of Apple."
One of Apple's attempts at that next phenomenon, the Apple Watch, has been slow to take off in the mainstream despite growing into a billion-dollar money-maker.
But Cook stood by the company's faith in the product, arguing that it's unfair to expect it to become a blockbuster overnight.
"In a few years, we will look back and people will say, 'How could I have ever thought about not wearing this watch?'" Cook said.
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TopicsApple
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