Stefan Mileschin

Apple is trying to boost its share price by increasing its dividends to shareholders by 50 percent.

The move will mean that shareholders will collect $15.7 billion of Apple's cash mountain.

According to Bloomberg, which asked different analysts, each shareholder will collect $4.14 a share. The resulting yield of 3.7 percent would be higher than 86 percent of the companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index paying dividends.

Apple will not have to be hammered for tax from the move because it would use its US cashpile rather than its foreign cash pile which would be subject to extra taxes.

Cupertino has been under a lot of pressure to start returning money to shareholders after the price of its stock fell dramatically.

Investors including David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital are pushing for more money as growth slows and Apple loses ground to Samsung.

Apple is sitting on $137.1 billion in cash and investments so buying the shareholders off is not going to hurt that much.

Chief executive officer Tim Cook, who a year ago this month reinstated a dividend and announced a $10 billion buyback, faces mounting pressure to take bolder steps to pay out more of Apple's $137.1 billion in cash and investments.

Most analysts say that there is no way that Apple will ever need as much cash as it is sitting on.

Apple does want to buy back a lot of its stock, but this would be expensive, particularly at the moment. This year the company could add another $40 billion to its cash mountain with about $15 billion of that in the US. That does not stop the fact that there has been a $300 billion decline in value.

The one time pay-out could boost Apple's share price and put it on the path to recovery again by attracting new investors.

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