Electronics giant Sony rumored for potential Apple acquisition - Page 3

The article may be stupid or not.

However, capitalization:
Apple 280 B
Sony34 B

Now tell me, who is small and who is big.

Apple would have a huge problem on their hands with Apple Records, if I'm not mistaken. Isn't their agreement intact where Apple is not allowed to enter into the music business? Sony's music division would create quite a headache for them.

This is just silly. No individual company can just "create jobs" out of the ether or whatever. It would be completely irresponsible for a company to create jobs that aren't actually needed, or that cost more than the jobs they would replace. Moving manufacturing to the USA for instance, would require Apple taking a huge hit on their costs making them uncompetitive. No one benefits from that.

The only sectors of any economy that can just "create jobs" are the consumers and the Government. Through demand for some product or service, consumers create jobs and grow businesses. By spending money on infrastructure, the Government can also create jobs.

Those are the only two ways, and it's basically the people's money being spent that creates them.

Actually it is. I hate to say it but sony just cant get it right anymore. I'm not a hater, or an Apple or Microsoft fanboy, the plain and simple fact is that sony has some serious issues with its idea's and the way it implements products. It charges more for things than even apple does, and their "Revolutionary" new ideas are hardly ever that anymore. They need some serious change at headquarters.

How about thinking beyond the final product. Sony is a key R&D, supplier and manufacture of many components. Display panels, chips...etc also Apple would acquire all of Sony's IP

It may be a good move for Apple. Especially since they are not a "Computer" company anymore.

Exactly. I can't see what Apple would gain. At some point Sony might have gotten them into the living room but it just seems so un-apple like to go that route now.

If Apple wants to become a major producer of consumer electronics .... nah, forget it. Not worth the time to argue this hypothetical scenario out. I can't see SJ or Apple loving it. Besides, Apple's business model is, and always has, been based around a very small number of well designed products. Why would they buy a company with such a vast product range. The more you think about the sillier it gets.

I'm not convinced that Sony is a major competitor. I don't see very many Vaios, or Sony Ericcsons around. I do see lots of stuff from Dell, Asus, Acer, Lenovo, Nokia, Samsung, etc.

Buying Sony would be a waste of money, and would hurt Apple a lot more than help.

It would get them into just about every design house and production studio on the planet:

Adobe has Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Premiere, After Effects, Dreamweaver, Lightroom.
Apple has Aperture (direct competitor to Lightroom), Final Cut Studio (direct competitor to Premiere), Motion (direct competitor to After Effects), Logic (direct competitor to Soundbooth), etc.

If Apple bought Adobe, they would own the content creation/delivery market.

tend to be way overpriced (like Apple), but unlike Apple products, Sony products tend to be crap. They break down, don't work well, and getting service is all but impossible. Years ago Sony produced quality products, but now i wouldn't buy anything made by Sony.

Apple used to make digital cameras, printers, and also developed the Newton. They also had a far larger product line of mac's for home users education and business users with a lot of overlapping models. There was also a lot of non os software development being done.

Contrast that with what they do today. The Mac lineup is much smaller but far more focused then before. Macs are carefully designed and optioned to appeal to the widest audience possible with just a few models. This results in fewer sku's and lower manufacturing and support costs. And because of Apples attention to detail they can go longer between refreshes and re designs then most of their competitors.

Apple launched the ipod and then carefully evolved it into powerful but affordable (compared to the 1st gen ipod) multimedia device and hand held computer. Out of that one product they evolved several successful products. The iPhone (yes I know it actually was released before the touch) the ipad and the second generation Atv.

One difference between old Apple (Steveless) and New Apple is focus. Old Apple had some brilliant, creative people but really lacked focus and discipline. Great product ideas do nothing for a company if you can't get a quality product out the door, worse if it is over budget or years behind schedule.

This is pure f*king madness. Our global financial system is a pile of absolute shite.

My Gawd what drooling gibberish from Financial Times.

Console gaming? All they need to do is make a controller and open up apps on AppleTV, maybe shove in a nice GPU to go with the A4 processor and voila... Apple Gaming Console that probably could do better graphics than a PS3 -- whose graphics are dated, pixelated, and just... *sigh*

Semiconductor business? Cell? After the fiasco with the G3, G4, G5 with Motorola and, IBM, somewhere in there? Really? Cell? FFS, man. Which "enhances multi-media performance and vector calculation" -- Does Financial Times even know what these words mean, let alone "multi-media"?

Memory sticks and Mini Discs? Precisely the proprietary storage Apple wants to destroy. (Apple likes its *own* proprietary gear, thank you very much...)

Even if tomorrow every Sony TV came with Apple TV built-in, in all the 50+ or whatever countries where Sony TVs are sold, where are they going to get the content? The content licensing alone is a nightmare. Which iTunes Store *outside the US* has any sort of decent content? UK maybe. Maybe. And where would the infrastructure for all that streaming come from?

The only thing Apple would do after buying Sony would be to discontinue their entire product line, take over all their manufacturing capacity for Apple products, and offload all media ownership/rights/etc to Disney. Oh, and Steve Jobs will personally see to it that Blu-Ray is absolutely dead in 2 years.

Adobe would be a better acquisition.

It'd be a very strategic one:

1. It'd be a great way to end the Flash wars and fully focus on HTML5.

2. Oh, and didn't Microsoft show interest in acquiring Adobe as well?

Maybe, but they would also have to deal with the consequences with having such control. Not to mention the fact that Adobe is heavily invested in the Windows business.

I just don't see it happening. The companies aren't that compatible culture wise and the legal hassles wouldn't be worth it.

Adobe has no intentions on dropping Apple so there is no reason to buy Adobe unless they wanted to make an overtly anti-competitive move. If Adobe is still going to develop for the Mac than why bother buying them up?



1) There is no flash war any more than what the media is stirring to serve up and that isn't going to change any more if Apple buys Flash - people will still use it.
2) Were did MS show interest in buying Adobe - other than a meeting between Balmer and Adobe's CEO (which we know nothing of it's contents outside of rumor mongering) MS buying up Adobe suffers from the same legal issues that I brought up above. It won't happen either. If MS can't buy Yahoo outright, they aren't going to manage buying Adobe.

Now that's a good idea...! Free Snapple with every Mac. Ah, refreshing.


If Sony could deliver real holographics in virtually every living room for the 2012 Olympics, then hell yeah Apple should buy them out just for that. Otherwise...


It will be called AppleTV 2


Old skool bro... Oh, the memories.


Apple *was* big in the content creation/delivery market. They decided to let it slide.

I've heard from other people that Apple is crap.
Whom am I going to believe?
If they both are crap, then there will be a great and crappiest synergy.

Actually, Soundtrack Pro is the direct competitor to Soundbooth, not Logic.

Of course this would never happen, but imagine the 33 billion dollar FU to Eric over at google when steve literally rips google tv out of 'his' products

Yep... also there have been many 'takeunders' over the years. Which refers to a smaller company acquiring a larger one. So in the world of buyouts size doesn't (always) matter.

Apple plans to buy Monsanto and create genetically engineered iPlants that play music and have 4G phones in their leaves. But the seeds from these plants won't sprout, forcing farmers to buy new iPlants from Appsanto every year.

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You damn right baby!
Sony still hasn't answered the ipod touch. They are a bloated a** company. And look at the psp. Dear god! after 5 years all Sony could do was slim it down and double the ram. There ain't even a decent browser on that crap. The only reason I have it is for monster hunters. Period!
Besides, if Apple bought Sony Apple would go broke!!! Can you imagine the sheer amount of money it would take to stream line that effing behemoth?!!!!! You'll be throwing money out the window.
Now I can see Apple buying Adobe, Disney and paying off my credit cards and my tiny student loan. But Sony?
BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUULLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHH HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH************************** *T!!!!!!!!

I think he dropped a comma between the word "bid" and the word "and". It changes the meaning significantly.

Thompson

FT is just trying to make sense of something they don't understand and they aren't going to understand. Many many years ago, back when the FT reporters were probably little boys and girls, Steve Jobs used to tell friends and colleagues about his admiration for Sony and the Walkman. It was able to change culture and it was beautiful. It was a cult product. And Steve wanted to work with Sony and learn from Sony about the process by which they made such things that align technology with need. And he did.

When the ipod came out...it made perfect sense that this was a direction that Steve would want to push the company. Not to invent, but to innovate using mostly existing technology to make something really cool that would be culturally iconic. Again with the iPhone. And when we see not a netbook, but a forward-looking device to try to better align technology to need, the iPad makes perfect sense.

This whole thing got rolling because Steve Jobs said he wants to hold on to the $50 billion for strategic acquisitions. So you have this company that buys technologies for like a half a billion dollars...and you want to guess what they are going to use $50 billion for?

I will say...many many years ago...maybe 20 years ago, Steve Jobs used to talk about a fantasy of his where he would create the ability for people to create their own TV stations. They would not be subject to the whims of programming directors or kind of the narrow pipeline of broadcast frequency or even cable channels. He thought this would be really cool. Steve has also said going back many many years that he thinks in terms primary technologies and the application of what apple is good at (software, design, interface, user experience). What do we need to do this...what can we make well...what do we have to buy....

What are the pieces to making a successful technology that would allow you to create your own TV station? Maybe there is a piece or two there that might require amounts of money approaching $50B...where the technology is not quite there yet, but getting closer and closer....and when the time comes, the money will be needed....

I would say look there.

Apple doesn't be major competitors. It wears them down. They buy complementing tech which too much of Sony's overlaps Apple's. Not gonna happen.

Flash is going to die on its own.

Of course Steve was fascinated by Sony. They were the model for quality consumer electronics products. Today, though, Apple is the center of creative thought and quality design in its niches of consumer electronics. Apple would have little use for most of today's Sony, which is slogging through the trenches in mature markets against lower-cost competition. Apple will not buy Sony whole. A chunk of it? Maybe, but the parts Apple might want are exactly the parts to which Sony's management would most want to hold on.

I think this rumor's dead in the water.

That would be like the most kool you tube video ever!!!!!

If he didn't mean value then what did he mean?

Apple are already in every design house and production studio on the planet.
And they would not win any friends by discontinuing PC products.

If Apple is going to make a massive acquisition it will be to take them into a new business. Not make a modest boost to a current one.

C.

I believe Sony would be more trouble than its worth. Besides Apple dose not need Sony, Apple is selling its goods just fine.

Apple needs more capacity and more reasons for people to buy their products.

1) Buy production from acquiring manufactures.

2) Buy Sprint and Apple could form its own wireless network.

Take it Easy

Why not? The name rhymes, and they sell zillions of soft drinks.

Gaming comes to mind \

There are some downsides to Sony, but here are the real upsides:

- Access to Asian Markets. Anyone know what Sony's marketshare is in China?
Owning the Sony music and movie libraries guarantees content for Apple's "hobbies"
- Blu-ray licenses, no longer a bag of hurt
- Chance to kick MS in the only real success it has had since Windows 95. Apple + Playstation means bad things for XBox.
- Absolutely gets Apple into the living room.

Apple can sell off the Sony units that don't make sense:
- Someone would buy the PC unit.
Someone would buy the phone unit.

I will only believe it when I see it...

This is nothing new. The rumor has been around for years.

Could it be a Sony planted rumor for stock price enhancement?

Biggest laugh of the day, thank you bloggerblog.

Yeah, that must be it. And when we see Sony execs frog-walked into a Federal courthouse, we'll know it's true.

Well, to be fair, at the time it was the best option. I too invested a lot into MD tech and to be able to record digitally in the palm of your hand (listening to albums would never fly but for musicians, the thing was awesome.)
I don't regret it.. but that was my first lesson in the movement and pace of technology and how you can get left out eventually.

I couldn't think of any good reason why Apple would want Sony - but you bring up some interesting points. There might be a few fields where a purchase would give them more leverage.

Apple TV - Sony televisions (e.g. Bravia)/Blu-ray players
iTunes/iPod - Sony Music; Television studio
iLife - digital cameras/camcorders
App Store/iOS - PlayStation

However, Apple's philosophy has always been (under Jobs, anyway) to focus on a few products and do them well. I think the whole thing would be waaayy too messy. If Apple really took over, they'd probably slash half of Sony's product lines. Maybe they'd simply license some IP, do some software/hardware integration as described above. But I still highly doubt it, considering how secretive and centrally-controlled Apple is.