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Who Apple Should Buy With Their $7 Billion?

AtHomeBoy_2000

AtHomeBoy_2000

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 3, 2005
879
0
I thought this was rather interesting...
http://www.applematters.com/index.php/section/comments/who_apple_should_buy_with_their_7_billion/
What do Adobe, TiVo, Sun, Novell, Universal, Palm, Pixar and Real all have in common? Think hard, what could be the connecting thread? Give up? Well, in searching the internet it seems that a good number of people seem to think that Apple should buy one or more of these companies. Think it’s crazy? Well, Apple has $7 billion dollars in cash and $67 billion in market cap, so if Steve wanted to go on a shopping spree here is what it would cost him.....
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Personally, i vote TiVo. The deals with all the cable companies is great and all, but they own the patents to a LOT of great features. Apple might be wise to incorporate that into a Mac mini DVR.
 
AtHomeBoy_2000 said:
I thought this was rather interesting...
http://www.applematters.com/index.php/section/comments/who_apple_should_buy_with_their_7_billion/

Personally, i vote TiVo. The deals with all the cable companies is great and all, but they own the patents to a LOT of great features. Apple might be wise to incorporate that into a Mac mini DVR.
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This person is throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks. Every single takeover target is problematic in its own way. Of those mentioned, Adobe is the best bet. It has a strong product line with excellent synergies to Apple's own. TiVo suffers from having a name that is generic for DVRs. A lot of people own cable/satellite dish provider-supplied DVRs that they call TiVo, but are not. Sun is interesting. Its corporate culture is closest to Apple's. It has a similar legion of fans. But, it is in serious danger of being a relic of bygone times. Novell--is it still in operation? Universal? Ever heard of NBC Universal, 80% owned by General Electric? Oh, you mean Vivendi Universal, which fell on such hard times that it sold most of itself to General Electric? Palm? Is this for the PDA market which continues to see declines in sales? Or, is this for PalmOS, which is even losing Palm as a customer? Real? How does buying the company that everyone loves to hate help Apple? I mean, really--what does Real bring Apple that it doesn't already have?
 
The only one that would be worth buy(IMO) would be TiVo becuz a Mac OSX with a Tivo thing in FrontRow would but Mac OSX in a place to become the center of life in a house:eek:
 
I would like to see Adobe stay independent as I like their products.
 
I don't like the Tivo idea. Every time I've used a tivo aat a friend's house, it's always been screwey. I think Apple could make a much better interface for recording tv. They've already got a 5 button remote that controls 4 different media apps. Why would they want to bring on somebody else's legacy, non-intuitive (IMO) interface?

I fully encourage them to do the Mac mini-dvr thing, though. Just make it easy and integrated, ala the iPod. I'd be all over it.
 
I'd like Apple to buy full Quality Assurance and Documentation departments. They don't need to invest their money outside of the company at this point.

If they bought one of those companies, it should be Palm, to get BeOS.
 
MacFan782040 said:
Just curious, how much cash does MS have?
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At the end of last quarter, they had $40 billion. They're using some of their cash for a stock buyback program that will cost a total of $30 billion by the end of this year...they had spent $11 billion on that by the end of the last quarter.
 
MisterMe said:
This person is throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks. Every single takeover target is problematic in its own way. Of those mentioned, Adobe is the best bet. It has a strong product line with excellent synergies to Apple's own. TiVo suffers from having a name that is generic for DVRs. A lot of people own cable/satellite dish provider-supplied DVRs that they call TiVo, but are not. Sun is interesting. Its corporate culture is closest to Apple's. It has a similar legion of fans. But, it is in serious danger of being a relic of bygone times. Novell--is it still in operation? Universal? Ever heard of NBC Universal, 80% owned by General Electric? Oh, you mean Vivendi Universal, which fell on such hard times that it sold most of itself to General Electric? Palm? Is this for the PDA market which continues to see declines in sales? Or, is this for PalmOS, which is even losing Palm as a customer? Real? How does buying the company that everyone loves to hate help Apple? I mean, really--what does Real bring Apple that it doesn't already have?
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But arnt most companies bought up when they have problems? That when they are cheap to gobble up, the point being is that you can turn that company around and make money from it.

If Apple bought Real, Quicktime could become a more aggressive alternative to Windows Media. PErhaps merge the 2 products and services, and increase Apples marketshare of on-line media.

I think Real gets a worse rep then it deserves. The streaming quality (from the BBC website anyway) is far superior in quality then the windows equivelent. The Real Player on the Mac is actually quite nice and simple, no adware or any annoyances, unlike the QT player.

The problem with Real is that it is hopeless at marketing itself. with the rise of online music and the mp3 player, Real really did miss the boat as is being squeezed out by Apple and MS. If Apple bought Real, it could be a stronger player in the streaming market.
 
geese said:
But arnt most companies bought up when they have problems? That when they are cheap to gobble up, the point being is that you can turn that company around and make money from it.
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The most expensive thing is the world is the one you need the least when you buy it. Apple doesn't need any of those companies in trouble. Their problem is that few others need them, as well.
geese said:
If Apple bought Real, Quicktime could become a more aggressive alternative to Windows Media. PErhaps merge the 2 products and services, and increase Apples marketshare of on-line media.
....
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Apple would receive the same benefit that you suggest if Real just died. If Real just died, it would cost Apple nothing. What sense does it make to spend $7 billion for something that is can be had for nothing?
 
MisterMe said:
Apple would receive the same benefit that you suggest if Real just died. If Real just died, it would cost Apple nothing. What sense does it make to spend $7 billion for something that is can be had for nothing?
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For $7bn it wouldnt be worth it, but if Real did go under, what would Reals former customers do ? (i'm thinking of the BBC here, as an example) Would they necesserily goto QT instead? Or would MS woo them?

If Real could be bought for relitivly little, it could be worth it, just for the extra marketshare- managed properly it could help QTs marketshare.

But as you say, not for $7bn.
 
MisterMe said:
TiVo suffers from having a name that is generic for DVRs. A lot of people own cable/satellite dish provider-supplied DVRs that they call TiVo, but are not.
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That isn't always a bad thing. Think iPod ;)

Sun is interesting. Its corporate culture is closest to Apple's. It has a similar legion of fans. But, it is in serious danger of being a relic of bygone times.
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I actually hold the exact opposite viewpoint.

Sun's culture is actually quite different to Apple's and this would likely be the most difficult part of the challenge of merging the two businesses. Sun is a big OpenSource player and believes that the value is on the server and in the service (hence their mantra "The network is the computer". Apple believes that the value is in the client and the software (focus on iPod rather than iTunes, focus on Mac OS X over Mac and Xserve). Sun tires to be very open and transparent, they encourage most of their employees to 'blog'. Apple is famous for its secrets - even Jobs doesn't have a public weblog at the moment.

Conversely, Sun technology such as JavaCard, their T1 microprocessor and Solaris continue to provide Sun with unique value. They struggled just after Y2K and during the global recession, but they are set to make a huge comeback just as Apple did. Finally, there is actually very little overlap between Sun products and Apple products right now - they are almost complementary to each other.

However, I think Apple would be best of hanging onto their cash reserves for the moment and perhaps creating an alliance sub-organization with one or more companies (think of iPlanet, the Sun|Netscape alliance, after AOL bought Netscape).
 
bousozoku said:
I'd like Apple to buy full Quality Assurance and Documentation departments. They don't need to invest their money outside of the company at this point.
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Hehe.Couldn't have said it better myself. :D

Although, if they were to buy Adobe and shut down the windows software it would generate A LOT of Mac switchers. ;)
 
Diatribe said:
Although, if they were to buy Adobe and shut down the windows software it would generate A LOT of Mac switchers. ;)
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The only issue I see with that is that is that I am sure that Adobe makes much more money off windows software and you would have to pay for that revenue when you aquire the business.

So it would be risky to pay to aquire a revenue stream and then shut it off completely. You'd have to be damn sure that you'd sell enough extra Macs to make up for the loss of the Adobe windows revenue. Which may or may not be possible, but it would take a big study to find out.
 
slu said:
The only issue I see with that is that is that I am sure that Adobe makes much more money off windows software and you would have to pay for that revenue when you aquire the business.

So it would be risky to pay to aquire a revenue stream and then shut it off completely. You'd have to be damn sure that you'd sell enough extra Macs to make up for the loss of the Adobe windows revenue. Which may or may not be possible, but it would take a big study to find out.
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Especially with such a big company as Adobe. The thing is though that there are almost no competitors. If they would shut down support within a year you'd have a lot of people switching because they have to. It's risky but as long as there are no competitors it's more than possible. After all photoshop users upgrade almost every version anyway.
 
Metatron said:
Sun...buy sun.

It is worth it, then adobe.

Software and Hardware excellence.
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Sun is going down fast. Our company won't even purchase Sun equipment because it is too expensive for what you get. Their support has been going downhill for some time now.
 
Diatribe said:
Especially with such a big company as Adobe. The thing is though that there are almost no competitors. If they would shut down support within a year you'd have a lot of people switching because they have to. It's risky but as long as there are no competitors it's more than possible. After all photoshop users upgrade almost every version anyway.
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although it would only be a year or two after apple drops support when another company hops up with a new product, after that HUGE gap in the market. many companies would probably jump at that. microsoft might even have a go at it.
 
I don't want Apple to buy anyone for at least three years, provided they are still well in the black three years from now. They need to further expand their iPod line up to generate income, and start to work on making Mac's as cool to people with iPods as iPods are. If Apple can double or even triple their marketshare and the number of Mac's they're selling year over year for three years, then I would feel good about them buying another company.
 
virus1 said:
although it would only be a year or two after apple drops support when another company hops up with a new product, after that HUGE gap in the market. many companies would probably jump at that. microsoft might even have a go at it.
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But most people couldn't go a year or two without using an Adobe product, and after everyone switched and realized how good Mac OS X is, the damage to Windows will have been done.
 
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