Speculation of an Apple Acquisition Drives Sony's Stock Price Up

[shigzeo]

Sony have a sound quality, but it isn't necessarily good.

Cant see this happening. Although if it did then maybe we would finally get some decent audio chips in the iPods. Sonys walkman range are superior for sound quality. The bundled headphones you get are far superior too.

They are only superior in warmth. They hiss more, have background clicking artefacts, less stereo separation and a lot more distortion. Unless artefacts, hissing, and distortion is considered 'quality', I beg to differ. By the way, I own 5 Sony Walkman units.

The A845 is the latest These tests are only on the Line out via the dock port, and my other tests (ran way after I was already dissapointed with the units) aren't published, but the Headphone out isn't that impressive.

Again, their sound is nice, but it isn't 'better' by any metric, unless subjective. The earphones that come with sony units, however, are far better. Far better.

 

[bigjohn]

maybe it's not a perfect fit (they'd have to sell off the music division; might also have to sell off the movies division).

understand that in the tech business though, they'd be removing a major market player and acquiring their tech know-how and more importantly, their engineers. fold those folks into the apple way of life and who knows what might spring forth. there are also manufacturing concerns and more of a worldwide brand that apple has been pushing forward with in recent years.

it makes perfect sense to acquire sony, but then again, they could probably buy up all of the properties in that list (EA, Netflix, Disney, Facebook, Adobe), but that would be an anti-trust nightmare.

that's right, i said apple and anti-trust in the same post.

 

[marksman]

You are forgetting that many people have invested in the growth of Apple by buying shares. We want to see something back from that. Money in the bank for Apple doesn't give us shareholders anything, doesn't contribute to growth and basically deters people from investing (no dividends).

This is one of many reasons why the stock market is dumb these days.

Growth is the only thing that matters. Smart business management does not matter. Apple sits on their money until they find a business investment that they believe actually makes sense. Yet if they just blew all the money right away they would be rewarded, and then ultimately punished when it failed.

Although the companies have a lot to take here as well. As you mentioned they don't pay dividends, as most companies don't do these days, so there is no other way for investors to make money other than just to push hardcore growth, over anything and everything else.

 

[elppa]

I can think of some uses in Apple buying Sony. Of course there would be job losses. And Sony would have to agree to be sold. And I think I read somewhere once that as a Japanese company it might be quite difficult for an American organisation to just walk in and buy them.

Here are the advantages (from an Apple perspective):
- Sony Ericsson licences (edit: uses) Android. They don't any more.

- Sony is one of the few Google TV partners. They aren't any more.

- Sony do know how to build TVs though. Apple TV could be integrated into an actual TV.

- Sony Ericsson know one or two things about building phones (even if recently that talent hasn't always show in the end product). They very likely have one or two useful patents as well. They might even know how to build antennas.

- Playstation 3 gives Apple a foothold the living room. Software update would link all current PS3 into the iTunes ecosystem.

- Sound/audio engineering - Sony is very good at this. They could produce AirPlay amps and speaker systems. They could help add new ideas to the iPod. And we might get good headphones by default. Sony also churns out a handy range of iPod accessories.

- Sony makes eBook readers. Apple has the fledgling iBooks. Again they could probably pinch some talent.

- Camera/Camcorders: Sony have made Camcorders for years and digital cameras for over a decade. Apple puts a camera into almost every product they ship. Again, Sony probably has some talent here that would help Apple.

- Miniaturisation: The Vaio Z is a marvel in terms of the spec sheet, size and weight. An infusion of talent to the Mac team. An Air with RAID SSDs. Yes please.

- Sony make PC software like Vegas. Apple could do with some more resources to get their software on the PC side into shape.

I didn't think there was as much crossover when I first read the rumour, but the more I think about the more areas you identify where acquiring Sony for their people and IP could be of strategic benefit to Apple.

I still expect it to be dismissed though.

 

[apolloa]

Everywhere has been speaking about the PS3 and games. Everyone seems to have forgotten what else Sony makes, like TV's!!! I believe this would be Apples interest, a nice HD telly with built in Apple TV, have we not been there before?

Personally I hope this to only ever be a rumour as whilst I couldn't care less about Sony's TV's Apple can just ******* off and leave my PS3 alone thanks, they have the worst attitude towards games in the entire business. Fact. The PS3 is a system Apple can only dream off making I'm afraid, it does so many things and is sold at a loss, something Apple has no understanding of ever doing, if Apple ran the PS3 it would have been an instant flop and never successful because they have no understanding how to do the business model correctly, the hardware would be no where near as advance and it would be sold at a profit from day one and basically be a rubbish flop incarnation of what Steve Jobs THINKS a console should be.
Still I think it's all just BS, I won't be happy with Apple if it isn't, not one bit.

I think if their is any truth it's they will buy Adobe, now if they do I would also think the anti trust and competition authority's would investigate Apple and see if they had an underhanded method of devaluing Adobe's shares by slating Flash across the media before buying them. And the law is not afraid to take down and punish massive corporations (Microsoft).
No, it's pretty obvious Apple is heading towards the cloud's, doubling it's massive data centre? It's got something big and online planned. Any purchase will be made with this in mind so Facebook is the only option in the list that matches that.

 

[ten-oak-druid]

The analysts and their associates are in the business of buying and selling stocks too. Look at how much their speculation changes the price of stocks. Its a racket.

I believe the Verizon iphone rumors are about manipulating stock prices through "rumor" too. A small price change day to day means a lot of money for large investors. I've noticed the rumors on the Verizon iphone appear to have less and less of an affect though. Its like the boy who cried wolf. No one believes the rumors anymore.

 

[Popeye206]

The only one on the list that makes sense is maybe Netflix. As for Sony, I can't imagine how you'd integrate the corporate culture of Apple with a Japanese company like Sony. Plus, if Apple wanted to do TV's, with the cash they have they could and do something way better than what Sony has. Same with a game counsel too. Heck.. Apple already is about to bury Sony and the rest in the game area.

Apple would be better off acquiring smaller technologies. Tech that would make their current products better and give them a competitive edge. Why would they blow all their capital on struggling big companies like Sony.

 

[Salacion]

I can't see how this rumor has any truth to it, but boy, do I hope it does come to fruition. Sony and Apple are my two favorite electronic companies.

Sony has been severely lacking direction, and equipped with Apple, oh god, the wonder! Plus, Apple could use Sony's influence in other parts of the world.

 

[Strangeite]

...it'd make much more sense to go and buy Toshiba or Hynix and get their hands on reduced Flash memory costs for their product lines. And much cheaper.

Phazer

And we have a winner!!!!

Although I think Kingston is a better target with its 40% market share of DRAM modules, but for the same reason you noted.

 

[Mistrblank]

how much is 51% of microsoft? buy it and shut it down!

Windows makes OSX look good,
win7 phones make the iPhone look good.

there's no reason to buy them or shut it down.

Similarly there's no reason to buy up Sony. Honestly would have put more faith in a rumor that they're buying out AMD or Nintendo. Smaller value companies with departments that could greatly enhance the existing Apple brands.

 

[Carniphage]

Acquiring a hardware vendor, or a software vendor will not change the world.

Apple disrupted the entire music sales business with iTunes.
Apple disrupted the entire phone business with the iPhone.

I think any large acquisition will be targeted at a similarly large disruption of an existing sector.

It seems to me that the TV sector is the one that is most in need of being transformed.

C.

 

[Jcoz]

What possible reason would Apple need to own Disney for?

I don't believe this is real, but just for sh*ts and giggles, the reason would be content control. Disney owns ABC/ESPN, Pixar, Walt Disney studios, partial owners of lifetime, A&E, History channel, Bio channel, military channel....

I have no idea what the cost would be but that is a stong move to capture content control.

Without the figures I couldn't say on value for the price they might command, just seems like too big a move to be real.

That list sounds like someone's wish list more that a realistic plan of whats to come.

FTR, pending the prices, those would all be dominating purchases in the market apple keeps moving closer and closer to. They all make sense to me in the simplest of terms as to what they would be acquiring with each company, but real world, that's just a pipe dream for someone who want those products blended, IMO.

 

[xyster]

Buying Sony would be the death of Apple

Sony died as a leading consumer electronics company when it entered the movie and music production and distribution business. It was Sony's music & movie executives' paranoia of controlling distribution of music & movies that caused Sony to miss the mp3 player revolution. Indeed, Sony still doesn't get it.
In all likelihood, had Sony remained strictly a consumer electronics company, it would have led the mp3 revolution.
The day Apple becomes a media company is the day it will cease innovating in consumer electronics and instead be consumed by copyright paranoia.

 

[S.B.G]

How much is Sony worth as a company? 50+ billion dollars of cash in Apple's coffers. If Apple bought Sony, I'm sure that would deplete their piles of cash quite a lot.

Sony makes all kinds of products and I'm sure they have lot's of cool technologies Apple could make use of. Although I doubt Apple would buy Sony.

I'd still rather see Apple buy Adobe and then they can kill off all the bad Adobe apps (whatever they may be, i.e. Flash) and fix and make better their applications that run on OS/X.

 

[Carniphage]

Sony died as a leading consumer electronics company when it entered the movie and music production and distribution business. It was Sony's music & movie executives' paranoia of controlling distribution of music & movies that caused Sony to miss the mp3 player revolution.

Excellent post.

C.

 

[Harun]

Accountants?

How do they not have to pay taxes on that, or do they?

 

[imwoblin]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

Sony is a Japanese national treasure and a brand most folks in Japan can relate to. I find it hard to believe that the stockholders would allow the brand to be absorbed into Apple Corp.

 

[kernkraft]

Whoever drew the graph above certainly knows how to continue a single line, but do they know where money is coming from? Those predictions are grossly optimistic.

 

[synergy]

I don't believe this is real, but just for sh*ts and giggles, the reason would be content control. Disney owns ABC/ESPN, Pixar, Walt Disney studios, partial owners of lifetime, A&E, History channel, Bio channel, military channel....

I have no idea what the cost would be but that is a stong move to capture content control.

Without the figures I couldn't say on value for the price they might command, just seems like too big a move to be real.

That list sounds like someone's wish list more that a realistic plan of whats to come.

FTR, pending the prices, those would all be dominating purchases in the market apple keeps moving closer and closer to. They all make sense to me in the simplest of terms as to what they would be acquiring with each company, but real world, that's just a pipe dream for someone who want those products blended, IMO.

Content control would be a bad move on their part. Gives other content owners less reason to cooperate with Apple when they control competition.

 

[S.B.G]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

Sony is a Japanese national treasure and a brand most folks in Japan can relate to. I find it hard to believe that the stockholders would allow the brand to be absorbed into Apple Corp.

True, and I'd find it very funny since the Japanese have dominated the electronics market for a long time only to be bought out by an American company.

 

[Butts M Biggilo]

Amazing!! The idea that Apple could buy Sony. Ive been using Macs since 1990. Just incredible. Sony has been faltering and has made bad decisions as a company, they were once at the top of the heap. Bluray is going to be skipped. I really dont think its catching on like DVD. People are going straight to HD/net connection to get there media. They make good tvs, but so do a lot of other companies. idk..

 

[tinman0]

Are any US Television networks up for sale?

C.

Physical in wires, or content eg Fox?

 

[alent1234]

Amazing!! The idea that Apple could buy Sony. Ive been using Macs since 1990. Just incredible. Sony has been faltering and has made bad decisions as a company, they were once at the top of the heap. Bluray is going to be skipped. I really dont think its catching on like DVD. People are going straight to HD/net connection to get there media. They make good tvs, but so do a lot of other companies. idk..

blu ray penetration is something like 70 million devices

 

[blueslate]

Streaming is about the Content

What possible reason would Apple need to own Disney for?

Disney owns content, tons of it. The value of streaming is to who owns the content. Take a look at the acquisitions that Comcast is making, although I can't stand them.

Sony owns lots of content too.

 

[synergy]

Everywhere has been speaking about the PS3 and games. Everyone seems to have forgotten what else Sony makes, like TV's!!! I believe this would be Apples interest, a nice HD telly with built in Apple TV, have we not been there before?

Personally I hope this to only ever be a rumour as whilst I couldn't care less about Sony's TV's Apple can just ******* off and leave my PS3 alone thanks, they have the worst attitude towards games in the entire business. Fact. The PS3 is a system Apple can only dream off making I'm afraid, it does so many things and is sold at a loss, something Apple has no understanding of ever doing, and you could happily do everything on a PS3 that a Mac does, to an extent.
Still I think it's all just BS, I won't be happy with Apple if it isn't, not one bit.

Why does Apple need Sony TVs? Slap a tuner and some more inputs on an iMac and guess what you have? An Apple TV. Increase the screen size, add some wall mounts. They already have the wireless mouse and keyboard, they can innovate the remote as well. Apple really does not need Sony for a TV when they perfectly well have their own engineering to make it happen.

This is just some analyst making money on a beaten down Sony stock. The instant other suckers bought they sold and made a nice profit.