Near 7:41 a.m. ET, Dow futures were down 39 points and S&P 500 futures were down 5 points. Futures on the tech-heavy Nasdaq were down the most, by 41 points, or 1%.
Dave Lutz at JonesTrading noted in his 'trader chat' note that it's rare to see the PowerShares QQQ exchange-traded fund - which is heavily weighted with large tech companies - being down 1.1%.
Apple fell by as much as 7% in pre-market trading after the company missed estimates for earnings and reported its first year-over-year decline in quarterly drop since 2003.
Also not helping matters is a downgrade from Goldman Sachs analysts, who removed the stock from their "Conviction Buy" list and lowered their price target to $136 from $155.
The drop pre-market took Apple shares to as low as $96.55, meaning they still see some upside. And elsewhere on Wall Street, most analysts are still bullish on Apple.
Twitter is also getting hit, down 14% pre-market after missing on first-quarter revenues and giving Wall Street projections for second-quarter revenues that were weaker than they had expected.
Ahead of the opening bell, Boeing reported weaker-than-expected profits while re-affirming its outlook for the year. And, Comcast said the growth in pay-TV subscribers during Q1 was the biggest in nine years - quite the opposite of the cord-cutting that everyone in the industry is talking about.
Moving away from earnings, the Federal Reserve's latest policy statement is due at 2 p.m. ET. Focus will be on the Fed's wording and how it assesses the risks to the US economy and its ability to raise interest rates further. No hike is expected today.
You can read our full preview here.
At 10 a.m. ET, pending home sales numbers are due.