Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Building Cash Reserves for 'Big, Bold' Moves
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Delta and Southwest are just a hair under $20 billion by themselves. How could they buy the entire US airline industry with cash to spare?
Haha perfect, the Apple Airport and Airport Extreme would be perfect names for an
airline
If Adobe were truly for sale, who doesn't think Microsoft wouldn't get into a bidding war with Apple over them?
I think both Apple and Microsoft are comfortable with Adobe being a "third party" but I think neither would stand by and watch as the other purchased it outright.
And as we've established, Microsoft has a lot more cash to play around with than Apple...
I think both Apple and Microsoft are comfortable with Adobe being a "third party" but I think neither would stand by and watch as the other purchased it outright.
And as we've established, Microsoft has a lot more cash to play around with than Apple...
Wouldn't surprise me if Apple bought Adobe. That'd be one way to kill Flash anyway
ha ... true indeed. i'm sure they're considering it...
this may be a bit out there, but how much is nintendo worth?
The extra 15 billion is counting their long term investments. It's interesting to look at their balance sheets. In 2007 they had zero long term investments, but now 15 billion. For the last quarter in 2008, and all 4 quarters in 2009, their short term cash held steady around 24-25 billion all while pumping up their long term investments from 2.4 billion to 15 billion. All in just 5 quarters!
You know, I really don't think so, and let me explain why.
I've never met the guy or worked with him; I've never even been in the same room with him. But I don't get the impression that Jobs is a genius, in the sense of being the guy-who-invents-stuff. He strikes me as having a different kind of strength: He's got impeccable taste, and the willingness to say no.
Look at something like the much-talked-about Courier proof-of-concept from Microsoft. Lots of people looked at that and said "Wow, that'd be awesome." I bet Jobs looked at it —*if he looked at it at all — and said "How embarrassingly half-baked." Because seriously, the demo is prototype hardware that's just barely held together, and software that's obviously intended to demonstrate possibility rather than vision. It's a demo only an engineer could love.
(And I say that as somebody who thought it was pretty cool, myself.)
I think Jobs is the kind of guy who believes in his heart that a great thing done poorly is worse than an above-average thing done really well. There was a lot of talk, what, yesterday or something about the camera-in-an-iPad thing. Of course Apple could put a camera in the iPad. Obviously. But setting aside for a minute whether the chip has enough processing power to do real-time H.264 encoding (as opposed to decoding which it can obviously do) and whether you can get reliable two-way real-time video over 3G, I think what's kept the camera out of the iPad is really simple: The user experience would suck.
It's hard enough to make yourself look like you want to look with a tiny camera behind a fish-eye lens, like the build-in camera on a Macbook Pro. Imagine trying to do that with an iPad. You'd have to either put it on a stand of some kind and arrange yourself awkwardly so the camera isn't pointing at a spot two inches above your head, or you'd have to hold it outstretched at a right angle to your face for the duration of the conversation.
I think Jobs (or Apple as a whole, maybe) decided that because it wasn't worth doing well, a camera in the iPad simply wasn't worth doing yet.
Maybe there's a solution down the road, some kind of sophisticated image processing involving phased arrays of sensors and lots of math to un-distort your image when you're not oblique to the screen. But that technology isn't practical yet, so the product doesn't include that feature. Because that feature would be half-assed, and it only takes one half-assed feature to turn something great into something silly. Remember the old saying about what you get when you stir a teaspoon of manure into a ten-gallon tub of strawberry ice cream? You get a ten-gallon tub of manure.
(Whoops, sorry. Got my code-names crossed: I was talking about Codex, not Courier.)
MS has almost exactly the SAME cash pile as Apple, so I don't know what you're talking about...not to mention that synergies between MS and Adobe are close to nonexistent.
http://www.businessinsider.com/char...h-and-st-investments-of-tech-companies-2010-2
Come Stevester, buy AMD, and get rid of the intel hog. In a couple of years AMD will the most complete cpu/gpu combo proposition, and they 'll overtake intel again. Right now they still have the best graphics bar none.
Let's make it happen.
Let's make it happen.
next bold move should be in 3D
iPads are nice addition to the apple product line. An interactive personal device that has a 3D display on the other hand would be an absolute game changer (especially if they could make it happen without those goofy glasses).
iPads are nice addition to the apple product line. An interactive personal device that has a 3D display on the other hand would be an absolute game changer (especially if they could make it happen without those goofy glasses).
cash is not the only indication of buying power. very few deals are done for straight cash, especially those of larger companies. You also have to look at market cap, long term/short term liabilities, cash on hand of the company to be purchased, etc.
I'm talking short term investments - the kind companies actually use for acquisitions.
Microsoft's got nearly $34 billion, and that's after some major shareholder dividends were dished out. Granted, they're not debt free like Apple, but they're by no means debt-laden.
Apple owns Microsoft completely. Microsoft probably owns one AAPL share so they have the right to go to shareholder meetings.
Down turns in the economy are good times to clean house, since you can get away with saying "due to the market conditions we need to cut staff". Especially in california...
Besides we don't even really know what those employees were hired to do.... maybe their job was complete.
Novell is a bit out of left field but I could see it working; they have some pretty damn good technology; Mono/Moonlight then the numerous enterprise remote management and security software that would make mac software deployment and updating easier. With that being said, Apple would have to come out with a Pizza Box desktop computer with easily removable/replaceable parts - even if it is only able to be bought through a enterprise reseller. With that being said; the holy grail of development in the enterprise is Visual Studio - until Apple provide the ability to drag 'n drop, assign code as easily as with Visual Studio - it'll always play second fiddle to Microsoft.
Forget buying Adobe; Apple could buy Quark for about $1.50 and a cup of coffee!
And to think Quark tried to takeover Adobe back in the late 90s...
I'm pretty sure $40B must be the correct figure, I'm certain I remember hearing they passed $30B a year or two ago, and I can't think what they could have spent that much money on in the meantime (don't think even their massive server farm costs anywhere near the difference).
Best suggestion yet. They are not going to buy a failing competitor or supplier. They said they like to buy "talent" not companies, so forget Adobe, Yahoo - they can probably hire the disaffected talent from these guys more easily.
Maybe buy a Dropbox or virtual DNS company or similar cloud based entities, but I suspect they will do better enhancing their MobileMe to synchronize their iPhones, iPod touches, iPads, MacBooks over wi-fi and 3G/4G (get rid of the wired connection synching altogether), adding "home sharing" to the iBookstore so I can share a book with my wife if we both have iPads, enhancing iPhoto, Pages and Numbers in-house, starting a search arm. All better use of the cash then buying a loser.
I would love it if they would buy a "content" company like Disney, or a newspaper company, or start a delivery company such as a virtual cellphone network, but that would be biting the hand of their current "partners" so they probably shouldn't.
Lots of fun speculating, but we will know when we know.
It's got to be about mobile communication in the future. Computing on the go, that's the direction they're going in. I'd love to see Apple offer up a data plan and give iPhone/iPad customers VOIP on those products.
I do have some concerns about Apple and their carrot dangling. It's getting a bit too brazen.
I do have some concerns about Apple and their carrot dangling. It's getting a bit too brazen.
Interesting take. And some quality points that I think reflects Apple's future direction.
Don't compete with anybody with major money and focus.
The iPod snuffed out competitors because of DRM. Now that the iPod can't leverage that competitive advantage you can see Apple trying to distance itself over the long term from it. The amount of market is shrinking now.
As the number of people whose total library is 100% DRM free (and minor additions to get content onto more devices) they have to compete with more vendors with viable competitive products.
What do you mean vaguely similar? LG had big screen, touch panel phone they showed at trade show months before the official iPhone announcement.
Apple isn't far out in front of folks. There is a added refinement they bring to products but aren't leading with products that nobody hasn't trotted out onto the market before.
Not really. New product category for Apple doesn't mean that there aren't alternatives already out there on the market.
Like AppleTV, Apple didn't lead with proprietary books, video , and the web formats and they are available on competitive devices..
They have already stated not going to buy just to grow revenue. (may change their tune in a couple of years. The problem is once their business get big and mature it is increasing harder to get some new rapid growth spurt that is going to be large enough to make a difference. ).
May not be so much as Apple R&D but also along lines of venture investments. ( seed money for foundries to expand, new screen factories, etc. Similar to the front/seed money for memory . )
Apple is very adapt at taking something that someone else who is "out there on the edge visionary/revolutionary" invented and making it platable by more mainstream folks. ( home brew -> Apple II , GUI/Xerox -> Mac , MP3 players -> iPod , hand held computer -> iPhone , Dynabook -> Netwon -> iPad )
I would be surprised if Media Plublsihing (Books , Magazines ,etc. ) are going to be quite the leverage that some of the previous ones were. My guess they will try to get more money out of the customers they already have rather than increase the number of customers .