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Former General Electric CEO Passed on Buying Apple for $2 Billion in 1996

Sun Microsystems was also sniffing around at that time. They were thought to have made an actual tender offer to the board of Apple at a significant premium over the current stock price. Actually this was the reason I bought my AAPL in 1997, figuring that a takeover was a worst case scenario for the company.
 
ZipZap said:
Not sure how news worthy this is...at the time Welch made the right call. You cant use today's view of Apple to judge a decision from 1996. Nor can you say that GE would have done a better or worse job.
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relax...it's interesting...that's it.
 
Right, and Xerox could have made more than just office copiers. This is an utterly pointless what if, like signing the Bulls w/o Jordan or the Red Sox w/o Ruth. The odds that Jack Welch would have turned Apple around were about the same as him dunking on Clyde Drexler.

As for the Microsoft cash infusion, that lifeline worked both ways considering MS were arguing before the Supreme Court that there were other healthy competitors ( or at least alternatives on life support) left in the PC market.
 
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hugodrax said:
If GE bought Apple, There would be no Apple, GE would have smothered it with muddle management and infighting. It would die like a python smothering its prey.

You would have no OS X, no ipads or iphones. We would still be using antiquated dumb phones and blackberries.

So GE did the right thing, because it would have been blowing 2 billion dollars to waste.
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100% this. The most likely outcome would have been a management decision to shift the OS to Windows because some accounting wonk would have a nice spreadsheet showing cost savings.
 
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Thanks god that didn't happen it wouldn't be he apple it is today and there wouldn't have been iPhones iPads iPods iMac etc....
 
You'd have to be an idiot to buy Apple for $2 Billion in 1996. Even Steve Jobs wasn't sure he wanted to go back to Apple in 1997, the company he founded and loved. That's how bad it was.
 
Even if GE did buy Apple, Steve Jobs would still be at NeXT, then the phones we use now may have been called NeXT phones
 
This is not a story of regret, but an interesting example of how history could be changed in unexpected ways. We really, really need to thank Welch for giving us the toys we have today by not buying AAPL.
 
Apple dodged a missile that time. I don't want to imagine what that greedy ********** would have done to Apple.
 
MacRumors said:
One of Jobs' first major projects was the iPod, which launched in 2001 and set the company on its current path. The iPhone followed in 2007, the iPad came in 2010, and the Apple Watch, Apple's newest product, launched in 2015.
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While the iPod was a big successor to Apple when it came out, I think it was really the original iMac that came out in 1998 that changed everything for Apple.
 
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Jack Welch had/has no vision. He's the one that essentially turned GE into a bank (GE Capital) and caused the debacle with losses.

GE was actually one of the leaders in information technology and network services. It was running international networking in 1969 (US <-> UK) and email shortly thereafter. That, of course, was only internal because the regulatory authorities did not allow it to be a commercial offering. GE Information Services was a major player in online activity in the 70's and 80's. But no-vision Welch wanted big quarterly returns and starved it of investment resources.

As an example of where GE was, have a look at the IPv4 address of any GE site. It's " 3.xxx.xxx.xxx". That's right - GE has the very first Class A address ever assigned (1 and 2 are reserved).
 
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StevieD100 said:
I traded my Compaq shares for Apple in 1999. These were originally DEC Shares. I lost a lot with them but have gained a lot with the Apple ones. sadly I don't hold any Apple stock these days.
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..and then I have stock that was bought for several times its current value. I keep it at this point because the certificates have very nice raised graphics. Ha.
 
"... Apple bought NeXT for $427 million ..."

No. As Jean-Louis Gasse has commented recently, it was a reverse acquisition. NeXT bought Apple for minus $427 million. If you doubt that, look at the list of VPs after Steve was in place - most of them were from NeXT.

One of the exceptions was Ive. He was already working for Apple and has said that he expected to be fired by Steve. But Steve listened and liked what he heard - one of the best decisions he ever made.
 
sarge said:
but you're right, I meant Federal Court, not Supreme. I'll give you that.
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Not only do the timelines not match up, the settlement between Apple and Microsoft gave the latter no cover for anything the government was investigating, even assuming that was its purpose, which it was not.
 
GE runs like a third world country government agency; tons of red tape, nickel and dime mentality, and counter productive politics. Nothing like Apple
 
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