With more than $70B in cash, Apple could buy Nokia, RIM, HTC & Motorola - Page 6

I just about rolled out of my chair laughing. You pulled a quote from the UAW to tell us how superior union workers are?!?!?!?!?!?

Well recently, because of The Fed's printing press, that's true. Otherwise it is less true.

i remeber when they were saying 50 billion, man its getting bigger quicker and quicker, my guess and personal aim if i were in apple shoes right now would be to let it grow to around 100-250 Billion and then buy a few big boys, if you all remember steve did say along they line we have think big and invest in bigger things, so its going to happen at some point, and i'm not talking about buying these small companies for under a billion...

possible targets:

Sony (maybe)
Sumsung
Microsoft (maybe)
sega
nintendo

next areas i see then entering into is TV market and games consoles, already in the portable games console market

Everytime I see a gold-standard guy on a forum I want to beat them over the head with the USA's deflationary recession of the late 19th century which ended with the Gold Rush and the rampant Spanish inflation after the discovery of the New World. There's no good reason to tie your money supply to a totemic shiny metal, lets all stay in the 21st century please and not try to crawl back into the 19th.

Fact is that inflation is a good thing in the midst of a deflationary recession, the Greeks would love a bit of inflation about now - along with a currency of their own that they could depreciate.

Actually as even the BBC hint, it's not primarily down to wages and a Reuters article on the same subject makes it clear. The decision by Foxconn to site a plant in Brazil is more related to high import tariffs in Brazil and Mercosur.

Apple's cheapest iPad, for example, retails for about $860 in Brazil, versus $400 in the United States.

Now I would argue that Brazil and the rest of Mercosur lose more from those import tariffs than they will gain, but that's a different discussion.

All that dough is in foreign bank accounts and would have to be repatriated...thus Apple would have to pay somewhere near ten percent just to move it back into the USA.

Congress has toyed with the idea of passing a tax break to entice corporations like Apple (and some big pharma companies) to bring the money back in.

In fact, Congress has done just that in the past. The problem was that companies just started putting even MORE money in foreign accounts with the idea that Congress would just legislate another tax break.

That hasn't happened yet and may never.

So, we'll have to stay tuned.

But my guess for one use of the money is that Apple simply wants to keep it's cash because of Mr. Jobs tenuous health condition and when (we are all gonna die) he does pass away, the stock could plummet.

Thus, Apple would be in a position to perform a stock buy back...

One person's theory...

I say they should buy AT&T and give every iPhone customer unlimited voice and data for $50/mo.

I noticed that you were silent about my post earlier: let me repeat it

From 2004. In 1970 ( in 2004 dollars) the median male income was $28,100. In 2004 it was $30,513. I bet all gains, and any subsequent gains since 2004, have now been wiped out.

Contrast that with the difference in the twenty years between 1950 and 1970. The median - in 2004 dollars again - went from $17,000 to $28,000. A gain which is 5 times higher than the 33 years from 1970-2004.


Prior to that you were talking about the pie getting bigger for everybody, and posting the increase in total GDP in the last 30 years without mentioning how much went to capital and how of that GDP went to labour.

Answer: more goes to capital. The question we are asking is why.

Economics is not a real science by the way - I increasingly see it as an ideology, and no more scientific than other social sciences, albeit the only one which is right-leaning. It has little or no predictive power, and produces drones who repeat the Econ 101 as if it were the only Truth in the world.

The gold standard has to be imposed too. A real libertarian would allow banks to print money, not just the FED. And banks would cause booms and busts at more accelerated rates than now - assuming they all agreed to accept each other's currency.

As for the gold standard - as you point out : nonsense. The amount of money would stay static when the number of goods increase causing deflation, and massively increase with a gold find causing inflation.

This shiny metal has nothing to do with the real economy.

I am sure that nobody here is an anti-capitalist. Supporting Apple is not something that Marxists do, despite what I have read on some right wing blogs; nor are we in the main socialists, a socialist believes in re-distribution and the ownership of factories by governments.

What I think is this: capitalism works better when workers have more power to bargain, something which can't happen now because of the ease of off-shoring etc. When it did happen, or when paternalistic capitalists like Ford realised that workers were consumers, thats when capitalism produced the great gains for worker's wages. Since most of us are workers that is what we should be interested in, not the ideological stance of pro-capitalists who think we should be happy just stand still in wages because capitalism is self-evidently better than anything else. Modern capitalism isnt better than a much better system: the capitalism which existed until modern capitalism, the one with a better distribution of wealth and income between classes.

Long term that would be good for capitalists too.

Ah - awesome post. Apple is absolutely nowhere in South America , if you remember the StatsCounter info I posted last week. Bada is doing better.

Interesting that South America is doing what North America could also do - the only way to bring jobs to the west is protectionism.

A bit of advice: Avoid trying to pontificate on subjects you obviously know nothing about. It make you look foolish. Like now.

Here again...I suggest a little more study for you in this area.

See this is the reason I did not join this site as stated in my first post. I'm not sure you even believe what you are saying you just want a feeling of being superior, it isn't about sharing knowledge, it is about your ego.

Vw's are premium and mass market in much the same way as an Apple iPhone is. This would be a strange forum to say you can't be both. Yes unusual but not impossible. VW also own Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini and Bugatti which are certainly high end. They make their cheaper brands (built on the same platforms as the premium cars) in cheaper countries. Skoda for example build in the Czech Republic, China and India.

German built VW's (and Audi's) are sold at a much higher price than Opel or Ford cars. Here is just one article that describes a VW as a premium vehicle.

http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/volkswagen-world/news/161

VW sell virtually the same cars under different brands. The German made premium brands have higher prices which offset the increased wage costs.

Read the following:

http://www.wintonsworld.com/cars/car...W-Quarter.html

Quote:

"Weve long argued that VWs number one goal is not profit maximisation, but rather full employment in its home state of Lower Saxony, but it seems as if VW is not only able to fulfil its employment obligations to its controlling state shareholder, but also report near best-in-industry profitability"

"VW was the only German (auto) company not to cut headcount in the recession. VW has labour productivity in its German plants that is about half what its international volume brand peers achieve. VW continues to carry many vanity projects that divert resources and or lose money like Bugatti and Phaeton, but it doesnt seem to matter, Warburton said."

VW a state controlled enterprise that achieves full employment in a developed economy with high wages in factories that have half the productivity of volume rivals, all whilst maintaining near best in industry profitability.

This is really some achievement and knocks your ill formed argument out of the water.

You say that UK car production is almost all Japanese production. Jaguar/Land Rover are owned by Indians, MG is owned by the Chinese. BMW build all the Mini's here in Oxford and also own Rolls Royce. Aston Martin are British owned and VW own Bentley. Virtually all of those are premium brands!. Even the Nissan factory is building the new expensively priced Leaf electric car. You are speaking without bothering to find out the real facts.

Italian labour productivity per person employed in 2009 was worse than Belgium, Ireland, France, Luxembourg, Austria and Norway within Europe and far worse than the United States. They look okay productively in Europe even though productivity declined because the whole Eurozone contracted so badly. Even Fiat are moaning about Italian productivity.

http://www.rpmgo.com/fiat-unhappy-wi...-productivity/

Are you saying Italy joined the Euro in 1995?, the currency didn't exist till 1999 and they agreed to join it in 1992 via the Maastricht Treaty. In any case the size of manufacturing in their economy could point to their failure to grow their service sectors in line with other nations. The UK for example has built its entire economy on the financial services sector since the 1980's and this has been responsible for most of the GDP growth since that time.

The only thing that the size of the Italian manufacturing industry as a percentage of GDP shows is that they have failed to diversify in a changing world. When combined with the productivity decline all you have done is offer an explanation for their lack of growth not proof of their manufacturing prowess.

Also to quote the Economist on Berlusconi:

"His poll ratings are falling relentlessly, largely because of Italys economic stagnation. On June 12th-13th he suffered his third and most significant political defeat in less than a month, when he lost a clutch of referendums."

http://www.economist.com/node/188367...36706&fsrc=rss

If you had paid attention to the news in the last week you would have known all this.

I was responding on the argument that was made earlier in the thread that Apple could not set up again in the US without decades of investment first, showing that Foxconn seemingly can do things fast.

The primary reason for manufacturing in Brazil is of course accessing the market but also it makes sense to diversify production incase there are any wage/currency shocks in China or god forbid a Japan style disaster.

To the commenter who said Foxconn are nowhere in Brazil the article states:

Meanwhile, Brazil's science and technology minister Aloizio Mercadante said if discussions and negotiations go smoothly, Foxconn is planning to begin assembling iPads at its plants in Brazil as early as this year.

That doesn't seem like nowhere but who knows. Seems a fast timescale doesn't it.

EDIT: Anyhow it is 2.30am here so I am off to sleep. I am definitely going back to being a lurker on this. Too many intransigent ego's for me.

DOUBLE EDIT: How many unnecessary insults will be in this reply coming. It has taken 20 minutes so far so my guess is 7. Sheesh.

Get real, one of the major reasons that the USA is an economic basket case is because the government is run by business [and by association the military (huge business)]. So, how can the government leave itself along.

Good going! You're part of the way there. Keep going and you'll unravel the rest of it.

Who the heck came up with this analysis?

They are forgetting about the companies Goodwill and intangible assets, some of which are sometimes larger than the tangible assets themselves.

Only factoring tangible assets isnt giving you the full picture here. Business consolidations dont work that way.

All that money yet, they cant build a freaking US production plant to provide jobs to AMERICAN workers.

Shame.

Oh dear. Here we go again.

I would argue that BMW are the premium mass market equivalent of Apple. VW as a marque are more mass market, less premium. Consider the VW Golf, at around 16k it doesn't sell in the UK for appreciably more than an equivalent hatchback from Purgeot - the 308 is also 16k. VW doesn't enjoy a special pricing position across all its models, but it is profitable as incidentally is much of the rest of the european car - Renault, Purgeot maybe even Fiat in a good year with a stiff breeze behind it.

Car makers haven't tended to build cars in China to export to Europe, they built them in cheap EU members. In fact looking at http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/sta..._in_motor_cars is very interesting. It's old data (2008) but I don't have time right now to drill into their database for the recent numbers.

Even as Europe exports its cars primarily to wealthy markets they also import their cars primarily from wealthy markets. The bulk of our mass-market vehicles are built within the trading block, though they have obviously moved around within it - in much the same way that US production has migrated from Detroit to the South. This is why the Japanese makers built so much manufacturing capacity in the UK.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automot...011_to_present

Current Japanese manufacturing within the uk is around 850k units which is more than all the other makers put together. Given how much of the employment in the industry is spread out among component manufacturers that's about the best proxy that we could find of importance from an employment perspective. Are others making more money in the UK? Perhaps, but since you are discussing moving manufacturing to high cost countries it's really employment that matters surely?


Averaged across the whole country it's terrible, Il Mezzogiorno isn't a place you'd want to make anything, even though wages there are lower. When I made my comment about Italian productivity I was referring to Northern Italian productivity in clusters like the Veneto - which as an avid reader of the economist I'm sure you know are far more similar to German levels.


Yes, I typoed there but even in 1995 it was already in the ERM, so the same forces applied. Lira/ECU was 2073 in Jan 1995 and 1942 by Dec 1998 - so actually stronger -ie. by the mid 90s the Italians had stopped depreciating their currency.


Il Sorpasso famously took place in 1987, so at least until the early 90s Italy was growing faster than the UK - which would indicate that it was not just a failure to grow services but an active ability to grow manufacturing.


It's comments like that which make me think that


The point that I was trying to make before you dropped a thousand links on everything I said was that industrial clusters can remain viable in rich economies, but that doesn't necessarily mean that all manufacturing can be easily moved back to them. Cars and aerospace are both great examples of highly sophisticated industrial products that are manufactured in the west - often at the cost of considerable state backing whether German style cheap finance, UK style development loans for Rolls Royce or US style military program padding for Boeing.

Trying to create a new consumer electronics cluster in the USA from scratch would be extremely expensive, and likely unsuccessful - it makes far more sense to build on the clusters that america already has.


I realize that you think you're some terribly injured party being unfairly insulted and sneered at by a horrible egotist but I strongly recommend that you consider your own postings. My first post quoting you may have attacked your positions but it in no way insulted you. You began snarking with comments like 'But of course I bow to your economic mastery.' - and so I repayed you in kind by snarking right back. I'm quite comfortable with such tactics, or I'm quite happy with a reasoned discussion based on the facts - but if you want the latter you have to actually stick to it.

Note the chart shows Apple's cash and equivalents while the other companies show their enterprise value, not their liquidity.

They could send everyone in the U.S a check for $222.

You mean buy Man Utd, sell all the good players and watch them get relegated.

iColony FTW!

Not a check, an Apple Store gift voucher!

People always say we need to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US and others say we need to concentrate on high level design and engineering and outsource the factory work to China.

One thing to keep in mind is that although relations with China may be very pleasant at this time, you never know what will happen tomorrow. We could very easily find ourselves in a political disagreement with China which might leave us in a conflict with absolutely no manufacturing capability here in the states in order to defend ourselves. Things can change overnight in the political world, however it takes years to ramp up high tech manufacturing. Therefore I would suggest that from a national security perspective we need to keep manufacturing alive in the US.

What everyone needs to realize is today's economy is based on credit and is global.

This means that developed nations, like the US, can no longer afford to keep manufacturing jobs. Manufacturing jobs are for developing nations only, not developed nations. This is how they will grow their market, improve their human and worker rights laws, and basically catch up to us in these regards. We are a great distance from the heady times of WWII, where we could manufacture bombs and bullets to create wealth and grab that American Middle Class Dream.

As a developed nation, we should only be concerned about jobs that can't be outsourced. Inventions and Scientific, Creative fields, Computers and Technology, Financial and Legal fields, as well as retail, food services and Education. These are the areas we need to be focused on. Americans need to give up the ghost that is manufacturing. Manufacturing is how we made it this far, but it is now the rest of the world's turn to use manufacturing to achieve their middle class dream.

The benefits to us are increasingly apparent. You may not like it that the Maytag plant closed down, but the upside is $1 kitchen items and $2 electronics. I'm happy for this trade and I think you should be too.

Actually the reason why we won't hit the catastrophic scenario is precisely because we are so entangled together. They need us as much as we need them. Globalization of the economy means developed (and developing) nations are far less likely to fight each other. If we go isolationist, as you suggest, it becomes much easier for confrontations to happen.

Our entanglements produce a better scenario. Foxconn employs alot of people right? Hundreds of thousands, and their business comes primarily from American companies like Apple. If Foxconn mistreats their employees (as has happened) this creates a political situation back in the US and Apple can lose business. This forces our American companies to put pressure on a company like Foxconn to improve worker quality of life and pay, which will in turn cause China to embrace human and equal rights sooner. The pressure comes economically and through market forces, rather than from governments which simply resist each other's political requests.

In this way economic globalization is a very humanitarian thing, it's a rising tide that can lift all boats. It avoids WW3. It may mean that the US is hurt a bit in the short term, as we end up having to wrap our heads around this new idea, accept that manufacturing is not ever, ever coming back, but it will in the end create a more peaceful and humanitarian world which is what I think we all want.

So your idea is to create a better world by slowing raping the planet and taking advantage of the poor guy, wherever he may be, until even he has a few rights? Sounds pretty freaking screwed up to me. That's most positive sounding Republican big businesses spin I've ever heard.

Don;t forget unemployment is ridiculously up and we're trillions in debt with no jobs coming back...

Ok where to start...

First off, this isn't 'my idea'. Secondly, the poor guys (you mean the poor Chinese worker?) is perhaps slowly but in a very real way acquiring more income and a better life than he's had before. Is this growth process perfect? No, far from it. It's akin to our own industrial revolution, we had to go through some growing pains as we phased in concepts like the 40 hour work week and phased out child labor. But for them it's happening at a more rapid pace, what has taken us over 100 years they will do in 20 or 30 and this is in large part because of our external market and political pressure on them to fix issues.

Thirdly, I don't see how he has less rights. He's acquiring more rights if anything, as worker rights that are more in line with American standards become adopted at places like Foxconn. It is not perfect, but they are on a path to do better than the poor farming families that they came from.

I'm disappointed by your accusation that this is some kind of Republican big business spin. I'll admit my own politics are perhaps an odd mix of Liberal and Libertarian viewpoints, but I think you need to consider the source here. I voted for Obama in 08 and will gladly vote for him again in '12, and I agree with him on 80% of his actions and policies. That would make me very not Republican.

What I do have is a pragmatic sense of what it will take for the United States to achieve a 21st century economy. It is humanitarian of us to give up manufacturing and allow developing economies to assume that mantle, as it helps our citizens with inexpensive goods and helps their societies achieve financial freedom and democracy. Wouldn't you rather see them achieve rights and freedom through trade and market forces rather than at the barrel of a gun? I definitely would. This is not a US centric view, it is not an America-first view. It's a global view that thinks about where the human race might be in 2 or 3 centuries of growth and development.

Trying to hold onto manufacturing with an iron grip is not the solution to our financial problems. Yes the debt is nuts and it's not good for us, I would never dispute that. But the forced entanglements all nations share now does keep us involved and trading with each other. The system is founded on credit and trust among nations and institutions. It's in everyone's interest to keep that going.

There is one way to curtail unemployment in this country and get blue collar jobs happening again: We need a major, government driven initiative to move to a green economy. Refit buildings with high tech equipment and efficiency, install bullet trains around the country, begin developing and building suborbital flight systems. Begin the investments and work now to make carbon fiber and space elevators a reality. Have a real space initiative. Build and install a national electric car grid.

There's a bunch of these sorts of things we could do in the US that can't be outsourced that could put people to work physically making things for decades to come. But there's no way Obama (as much as he might want to) could get this sort of initiative through congress as long as the deficit-obsessed obstructionist Republicans are in charge. The choice is actually very simple for people, do they want to solve the jobs problem or do they want to solve the debt and deficit? It's not possible to do both right now, one will come at the cost of the other. I say solve the jobs issue now and worry about the debt later, but I realize this probably won't happen as it's politically unpopular.

Can we trust you about that? You might in fact be Dr Henry Kissinger.
*listens hard for a mumbling german accent*


Ok, ok, I get the message! You are in fact not Dr Henry Kissinger Very nicely reasoned posts by the way.

I LOL'd, thank you =)

Oh, what the heck, this looks like a fun thread to jump in to late.

The shareholders own Apple. If Apple has a huge pile of money, that money belongs to the shareholders. At some point the shareholders will get frustrated that the Apple BoD has a huge amount of their (the shareholders') money locked up in cash equivalents and demand a) a special dividend to cut down the huge pile of money or b) an ongoing dividend to slow the growth of the huge pile of money.

As long as Apple's stock price grows at a rate higher than the prevailing market and what the shareholders believe they can get from investing that huge pile of money themselves, they will be happy to let Apple hold onto it for them. Steve Jobs has also mentioned that Apple's management likes having a huge pile of money so they can buy things that will generate profit - other companies, negotiate prices on components, etc. Apple's pile of money gives it great leverage when dealing with other business entities. That's a nice place to be.

Apple can afford to take on projects with huge start-up costs that others would not be able to. Need to license music & movies from all the studios? Stroke a check. Need to send up your own satellite network? Stroke a check. Need to establish a moon base? Stroke a check.

Also, Apple is in markets that are extremely fickle. For all its technical prowess, the iPhone is subject to the whims of fashion and the masses. Nokia or Samsung or anyone else could come out with a product that dethrones the iOS devices at any time. Yes, Apple has sold a zillion devices, but that sales rate could dry up very suddenly. Apple/Steve likes having a cushion to keep the company going developing new products should that sales popularity ever dry up suddenly.

Someone also posted that Apple could be holding onto the cash as some sort of insurance for when Steve dies. That's interesting. I expect the stock will tank when Steve passes. Unless he can pull a Bill Gates and fade into the background, but that doesn't seem his style. When that happens, the pile of cash could/should cushion that fall - could AAPL fall to less than their cash value? Many other companies trade there if the outlook for future sales is dim. I don't see much value in a buy back, though.

Other than for their patent portfolios, I don't see any value in Apple buying any of their competitors. I'm sure they can license any patents they require for far less than taking on the burden of a whole company - and why would they want to?

As a shareholder, I've been happy with my AAPL returns. So they can hold onto my money for now. I may even give them some more of it.

- Jasen.

The US happens to have two - maybe three, if you count Libya - vey expensive wars going on. Bring that money home and put shovels in people's hands instead of guns. There have been lots of stories about the USA's failing bridges & roads. Let the feds pour dollars into those sorts of projects rather than shooting expensive missiles, etc. But my cynical opinion is that the military-industrial complex holds way too much power to let that happen.

- Jasen.

They already have one - that's where they found the iPhone.

Lol. I demolished your arguments with reason and links to the facts about how American workers are doing no better than 30 years ago, along with a demolition of your gold standard nonsense, an economic doctrine for cranks.

All that's left for you is ad hominmens and insults.

To the guy who suggested a "humanitarian" reason for capitalists to invest in China - there is none. Capital is merely following labour. To those who point out that electronics would be more expensive, the answer is that in labour intensive industries high labour costs are reduced by capital investment - that is productivity increases per employee - but owners only invest in machinery if labour is expensive.

The facts are that in a less globalised Market the US worker nearly double his purchasing power in the 30 years between 1940 and 1970 but stayed the same since then. Electronics would be more expensive if the West made it but we would all be earning more.

Riiight. You cherry picked some statistics that you think prove your point but didn't, apparently, note anything unique about the time frames you chose...and then you casually dismissed valuable economic theory and understanding.

Right back at ya.
Just curious... What mythical country operates the way you deem fit? Yemen?