From an investor point of view it could be frustrating. You are investing money in a company, and that company is just holding onto that money as cash. Most companies want to have some % of their expenses in cash for various uses. Having too much money can make investors upset.
But, Apple is not a standard company, so they can play by different rules in the stock market.
You don't really understand investment do you? Apple aren't "just holding onto that money as cash" -where "that money" is the stock in the company. Apple are though holding onto their profits as cash. And in an environment where banks are charging businesses whatever they want in interest for loans, Apple is being very very smart indeed to use its own cash reserves to lower its operating overhead. Any investor that gets "upset" with that strategy is an idiot.
As we learned from Etiquette of the Banker, The first rule of business is to protect your investment. Apple's investment is everything they develop, everything they design, everything they buy, everything they make, basically, everything they do.
So if they need a new technology, they don't have to think about whether they can afford it, or if their competition can afford to pay more. They have the liquid capital to just buy it - at any cost. That not only puts them ahead of the game in the technology stakes, it puts them ahead in every game, not least the future profits game - because if you beat the competition to a new technology, you gain first mover advantage, you force the competition to play catch-up, and rob them of sales and profits.
This strategy, as we've already seen several times, also makes that technology more expensive for the competition to buy - if indeed there's any capacity left in the system when Apple have bought it all up!
But that's all obvious as a result of watching what's actually happened, rather than reading financial pundits b1tching because they learned everything they know in the last century.
Finally, there's one other very important lesson to be learned here. Rule breakers usually appear in the form of start-ups. It's appropriate to be cautious about start-ups, they have no track record and we often don't understand what they're saying, never mind what they are doing, or if we even need what they're working on.
But, even though Apple still manages to behave like a start-up - internally, it's a very mature, and appropriately diversified company in all its operations. This is primarily why they are at the top of their game, as well as the World's second largest company. So, they're getting it right. Other companies should be seeking to emulate Apple in as many areas as is appropriate to their own operation. But to do that, they actually have to understand what it is that Apple is doing!
And as some people seem not to understand what $65bn represents, I thought I'd put it in perspective. It's nearly enough to buy Rimm, Nokia and Dell - outright!
