But how about AMD? Apple has taken the first step towards chip independence with the PA Semi and Intrinsity acquisitions for their iOS devices. How about going all in, and make their own CPU's for desktops and laptops, and free themselves from Intel? Graphics from ATI come as part of that package. It's certainly a big deal that would require the kind of cash Apple has been saving up, and furthermore it fits Steve's philosophy of owning and/or controlling the key technologies that Apple's products depend on. AMD - Apple Micro Devices?
AMD has been suggested on Twitter yesterday a lot of times. It would be interesting, ATI (soon to be rebranded AMD) and all that. You have to wonder if it would be worth it though. Buying Palm would have been a smart move, I think. Even simply for their patent portfolio. But we all know they were beaten to the punch there.
The last time Apple made a big purchase like these investors are suggesting brought Steve Jobs back to Apple along with the brilliant crew of Next. Since then purchases have been a small chip maker here, a specialized software company there, the jukebox company which iTunes is based on (sorry the name escapes me) none of which are household names.
Apple doesn't seem to subscribe to the mentality of companies like, Microsoft-Yahoo, HP-Palm, Time Warner-AOL, etc... who's mergers or acquisitions have not proven to be great successes. Rumors and suggestions that Apple buy Adobe would benefit nobody but Adobe stock holders. Apple seems to look for technologies that have something new and exciting to offer allowing Apple to realize a product fully. Buying a large expensive company like Facebook (which may have peaked in popularity by now) is not how Apple does business. Why buy when you can license or make a deal to integrate a technology that seems timely giving you a way to drop it when the world has moved on.
The company name you were searching for was SoundJam (or the product was anyway).
seriously this would make for a very interesting buy. They fit perfectly with Apples iOS platforms and there is plenty of opportunity to clean up the company. Plus iOS devices won't really take off until cell data rates drop significantly. Also they can get ride of some of the restrictions that current iPhone users have to deal with.
That would be $2,532M, $3,378M, $3,074M, $3,253M and $4,308M (net profit per quarters). Assuming linear growth of the net profit, they will amass additional $150B in 20 quarters, i.e. 5 years. So that's what I was talking about. Mid-term future. Sorry if I wasn't being clear.
Why would Apple want to spend the money to buy Adobe, then trash the crappy code, probably rebuild it from scratch and get stuck with the most expensive turd in the tech world, Flash? Let Adobe do all the heavy lifting with its apps. The day Adobe abandons its CS apps for Mac is the day they through away half of their income. Before that time comes watch for Apple to be out shopping for a little know company that has been working on the next great photo editing app.
You actually use any Adobe products? We make a lot of money using them - there is nothing out there to compete with Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Flash (I know you don't like to hear this but there is no other program that offers the interactivity that Flash offers yet.) Premier Pro is better than FCP right now (event though we have stuck with FCP, we are testing Premier Pro and it has been pretty much rewritten from the ground up I believe) and I guess it is a tossup between Lightroom and Aperture but I do prefer the former as do others in our office even though they could use Aperture. Then there is After Effects (and please don't say Motion measures up). I do love Color but AE with some RGS plugins makes it very competitive and Color is a very unApple app and had a real learning curve. Acrobat Pro is also a great program and while Preview is fast to open, it does not offer the feature set up AP. Adobe would be a great purchase for Apple if they could make it through the regulatory hoops.
Can't think of obvious choices, but that's why I'm not a CEO. Perhaps cover the spread, put minority but substantial investments in key areas to influence to apply the reality distortion field and influence direction.
Also I'd like to see technology endowments set up at US universities
US production facility
Free MobileMe with free traffic alerts/info and weather info in widgets.
An Apple research park, funding startups, 50/50 ownership
A satellite and it's own network(start with US)
What else? Ideas so far are mostly 'in the box'
IMO if they don't act soon, they have to start dividends.
AMD is cheap, a small fraction of their cash hoard.
Huge amount of IP
I suspect Apple is not happy about Intel being so important to them now, for example when they want to make you take the CPU with the GPU that sucks.
At first when Intel and Apple cozied up I got the feeling Intel was bending over backwards to do things apple wanted, now Apple has a greater market cap than Intel, they know Apple needs them, and are less inclined to "make them happy".
Apple could buy Intel too but that'd be a company changer / more of a merger and those 2 cultures would clash so badly.
AMD is a smaller fish, would give Apple immense control over their computing future, would probably get them first dibs at Global foundries chip factories, and take the secret stuff to a whole new level. It would also let them intermix software and hardware to an extreme level. It would take years to really see the collaboration, but I think that has a lot of long term potential.
AMD has been poor for so long, think what they could do with the financial clout of apple, plus PR wise AMD get's a huge burst from Apple's positive opinion in the marketplace. First apple was Chic and an underdog against Windows, next can be AMD. I think this has a lot more potential than any of the other mentions if you are looking for a shocker.
But how about AMD? Apple has taken the first step towards chip independence with the PA Semi and Intrinsity acquisitions for their iOS devices. How about going all in, and make their own CPU's for desktops and laptops, and free themselves from Intel? Graphics from ATI come as part of that package. It's certainly a big deal that would require the kind of cash Apple has been saving up, and furthermore it fits Steve's philosophy of owning and/or controlling the key technologies that Apple's products depend on. AMD - Apple Micro Devices?
That could be interesting for sure. I have to admit I don't know enough about AMD's current IP to be able to comment on the merits of this, but given the success Apple have had with making their own processor for the iPad/iPhone, you can imagine them being interested in making their own processor for the Mac.
That could suggest ARM as being a worthy purchase and people here have commented on that, but I can't see it. Firstly, much of ARM's strength is that it's licensed, so it's everywhere. It's dominance makes it more likely to dominate (sadly like Windows). I also wonder how much being able to run Windows natively has helped Mac sales. If it's significant, surely the Mac won't move away from the x86 architecture?
That would play into the AMD theory.
Obviously this is all speculation. One thing I've learned from watching Apple is that they will do what you don't expect. I do think that they will have to do something with this cash at some point, so it's going to be interesting to find out what.
I don't think Steve Jobs comments imply in any way that they even have an acquisition in mind.
These stories are always for clicks. We know they have acquisitions in mind, but the questions are: what companies? And how big are they? People always assume crazy stuff.
AMD is a smaller fish, would give Apple immense control over their computing future, would probably get them first dibs at Global foundries chip factories, and take the secret stuff to a whole new level. It would also let them intermix software and hardware to an extreme level. It would take years to really see the collaboration, but I think that has a lot of long term potential.
I doubt buying AMD would give them any claim on Global Foundries, nor would I think they would want it. Chip manufacture is a spectacularly low margin business - why would they bother?
AMD is cheap, a small fraction of their cash hoard.
Huge amount of IP
I suspect Apple is not happy about Intel being so important to them now, for example when they want to make you take the CPU with the GPU that sucks.
At first when Intel and Apple cozied up I got the feeling Intel was bending over backwards to do things apple wanted, now Apple has a greater market cap than Intel, they know Apple needs them, and are less inclined to "make them happy".
Apple could buy Intel too but that'd be a company changer / more of a merger and those 2 cultures would clash so badly.
AMD is a smaller fish, would give Apple immense control over their computing future, would probably get them first dibs at Global foundries chip factories, and take the secret stuff to a whole new level. It would also let them intermix software and hardware to an extreme level. It would take years to really see the collaboration, but I think that has a lot of long term potential.
AMD has been poor for so long, think what they could do with the financial clout of apple, plus PR wise AMD get's a huge burst from Apple's positive opinion in the marketplace. First apple was Chic and an underdog against Windows, next can be AMD. I think this has a lot more potential than any of the other mentions if you are looking for a shocker.
The 2 things I hope that Apple do look into buying are Adobe for the Creative Suite and Parallels Holdings, for the ability to incorporate the parallels interface into 10.7 or 10.8.
This way the OS would be creativity focused like it used to be and it can run windows apps so the business sector will not feel left out.
Seriously this would make for a very interesting buy.
AT&T are one carrier out of many many carriers worldwide that Apple deals with. Sometimes American's forget that. Besides, their market CAP is over three times the cash Apple has.
That's about the most logical reason for Apple to buy FaceBook I can think of... and obviously it's pretty lame... just to be clear Apple buying FaceBook would be a ridiculous move.
I think the first 5 commenters covered it all. FB is not a long term investment for Apple and would be grossly over-valued the moment. In the last 12 months I've seen valuations range from $3B ro $33B.
If Apple wanted the could easily build it's own FaceBook leveraging iOS devices, MobileMe to get started with an extension to other devices via iTunes. They could do so having learned from FB's many mistakes and short comings. I'm not saying in doing so Apple would kill off FaceBook like FB has to MySpace, but it's entirely possible over time... which goes back to FB being a horrible acquisition target.
Apple could buy Adobe. It'd be a good move for Apple and bring them back towards broader and more advanced software development in house for computers. It would probably help Apple's floundering software division, meaning both Pro Tolls (Final Cut, Logic) and consumer apps (Pages, Numbers, etc...). That said I think Adobe is doing fine on there own and so I'm not really hoping for this.
I see acquiring something like NetFlix more likely... something the value being leveraging their existing content distribution deals into iTunes.
I could also see Apple getting into cloud services like AWS, RackSpace and Google... and no I'm not suggesting they'd target consumers with cloud services, I think they'd be targeting businesses in direct competition with the existing players.
Finally, Apple has had a big couple years and I frankly think they'd be fine slowing down and refining what they've created, rather than start a big new project.
Comments
But how about AMD? Apple has taken the first step towards chip independence with the PA Semi and Intrinsity acquisitions for their iOS devices. How about going all in, and make their own CPU's for desktops and laptops, and free themselves from Intel? Graphics from ATI come as part of that package. It's certainly a big deal that would require the kind of cash Apple has been saving up, and furthermore it fits Steve's philosophy of owning and/or controlling the key technologies that Apple's products depend on. AMD - Apple Micro Devices?
AMD has been suggested on Twitter yesterday a lot of times. It would be interesting, ATI (soon to be rebranded AMD) and all that. You have to wonder if it would be worth it though. Buying Palm would have been a smart move, I think. Even simply for their patent portfolio. But we all know they were beaten to the punch there.
The last time Apple made a big purchase like these investors are suggesting brought Steve Jobs back to Apple along with the brilliant crew of Next. Since then purchases have been a small chip maker here, a specialized software company there, the jukebox company which iTunes is based on (sorry the name escapes me) none of which are household names.
Apple doesn't seem to subscribe to the mentality of companies like, Microsoft-Yahoo, HP-Palm, Time Warner-AOL, etc... who's mergers or acquisitions have not proven to be great successes. Rumors and suggestions that Apple buy Adobe would benefit nobody but Adobe stock holders. Apple seems to look for technologies that have something new and exciting to offer allowing Apple to realize a product fully. Buying a large expensive company like Facebook (which may have peaked in popularity by now) is not how Apple does business. Why buy when you can license or make a deal to integrate a technology that seems timely giving you a way to drop it when the world has moved on.
The company name you were searching for was SoundJam (or the product was anyway).
Dave
You can't just throw out: "They will have 200B." They far more likely won't.
You are right. I owe you a proof. Let's take the net profit data for the last 5 quarters:
http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:AAPL&fstype=ii
That would be $2,532M, $3,378M, $3,074M, $3,253M and $4,308M (net profit per quarters). Assuming linear growth of the net profit, they will amass additional $150B in 20 quarters, i.e. 5 years. So that's what I was talking about. Mid-term future. Sorry if I wasn't being clear.
Why would Apple want to spend the money to buy Adobe, then trash the crappy code, probably rebuild it from scratch and get stuck with the most expensive turd in the tech world, Flash? Let Adobe do all the heavy lifting with its apps. The day Adobe abandons its CS apps for Mac is the day they through away half of their income. Before that time comes watch for Apple to be out shopping for a little know company that has been working on the next great photo editing app.
You actually use any Adobe products? We make a lot of money using them - there is nothing out there to compete with Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Flash (I know you don't like to hear this but there is no other program that offers the interactivity that Flash offers yet.) Premier Pro is better than FCP right now (event though we have stuck with FCP, we are testing Premier Pro and it has been pretty much rewritten from the ground up I believe) and I guess it is a tossup between Lightroom and Aperture but I do prefer the former as do others in our office even though they could use Aperture. Then there is After Effects (and please don't say Motion measures up). I do love Color but AE with some RGS plugins makes it very competitive and Color is a very unApple app and had a real learning curve. Acrobat Pro is also a great program and while Preview is fast to open, it does not offer the feature set up AP. Adobe would be a great purchase for Apple if they could make it through the regulatory hoops.
I don't think Steve Jobs comments imply in any way that they even have an acquisition in mind.
Agreed.
Also I'd like to see technology endowments set up at US universities
US production facility
Free MobileMe with free traffic alerts/info and weather info in widgets.
An Apple research park, funding startups, 50/50 ownership
A satellite and it's own network(start with US)
What else? Ideas so far are mostly 'in the box'
IMO if they don't act soon, they have to start dividends.
AMD is cheap, a small fraction of their cash hoard.
Huge amount of IP
I suspect Apple is not happy about Intel being so important to them now, for example when they want to make you take the CPU with the GPU that sucks.
At first when Intel and Apple cozied up I got the feeling Intel was bending over backwards to do things apple wanted, now Apple has a greater market cap than Intel, they know Apple needs them, and are less inclined to "make them happy".
Apple could buy Intel too but that'd be a company changer / more of a merger and those 2 cultures would clash so badly.
AMD is a smaller fish, would give Apple immense control over their computing future, would probably get them first dibs at Global foundries chip factories, and take the secret stuff to a whole new level. It would also let them intermix software and hardware to an extreme level. It would take years to really see the collaboration, but I think that has a lot of long term potential.
AMD has been poor for so long, think what they could do with the financial clout of apple, plus PR wise AMD get's a huge burst from Apple's positive opinion in the marketplace. First apple was Chic and an underdog against Windows, next can be AMD. I think this has a lot more potential than any of the other mentions if you are looking for a shocker.
You are right. I owe you a proof. Let's take the net profit data for the last 5 quarters.[/IMG]
Your mathematical chart doesn't account for things like Apple spending some of the money. And other companies also growing in value. Nice try, though.
But how about AMD? Apple has taken the first step towards chip independence with the PA Semi and Intrinsity acquisitions for their iOS devices. How about going all in, and make their own CPU's for desktops and laptops, and free themselves from Intel? Graphics from ATI come as part of that package. It's certainly a big deal that would require the kind of cash Apple has been saving up, and furthermore it fits Steve's philosophy of owning and/or controlling the key technologies that Apple's products depend on. AMD - Apple Micro Devices?
That could be interesting for sure. I have to admit I don't know enough about AMD's current IP to be able to comment on the merits of this, but given the success Apple have had with making their own processor for the iPad/iPhone, you can imagine them being interested in making their own processor for the Mac.
That could suggest ARM as being a worthy purchase and people here have commented on that, but I can't see it. Firstly, much of ARM's strength is that it's licensed, so it's everywhere. It's dominance makes it more likely to dominate (sadly like Windows). I also wonder how much being able to run Windows natively has helped Mac sales. If it's significant, surely the Mac won't move away from the x86 architecture?
That would play into the AMD theory.
Obviously this is all speculation. One thing I've learned from watching Apple is that they will do what you don't expect. I do think that they will have to do something with this cash at some point, so it's going to be interesting to find out what.
Think small.....
I don't think Steve Jobs comments imply in any way that they even have an acquisition in mind.
These stories are always for clicks. We know they have acquisitions in mind, but the questions are: what companies? And how big are they? People always assume crazy stuff.
AMD is a smaller fish, would give Apple immense control over their computing future, would probably get them first dibs at Global foundries chip factories, and take the secret stuff to a whole new level. It would also let them intermix software and hardware to an extreme level. It would take years to really see the collaboration, but I think that has a lot of long term potential.
I doubt buying AMD would give them any claim on Global Foundries, nor would I think they would want it. Chip manufacture is a spectacularly low margin business - why would they bother?
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say buy AMD.
AMD is cheap, a small fraction of their cash hoard.
Huge amount of IP
I suspect Apple is not happy about Intel being so important to them now, for example when they want to make you take the CPU with the GPU that sucks.
At first when Intel and Apple cozied up I got the feeling Intel was bending over backwards to do things apple wanted, now Apple has a greater market cap than Intel, they know Apple needs them, and are less inclined to "make them happy".
Apple could buy Intel too but that'd be a company changer / more of a merger and those 2 cultures would clash so badly.
AMD is a smaller fish, would give Apple immense control over their computing future, would probably get them first dibs at Global foundries chip factories, and take the secret stuff to a whole new level. It would also let them intermix software and hardware to an extreme level. It would take years to really see the collaboration, but I think that has a lot of long term potential.
AMD has been poor for so long, think what they could do with the financial clout of apple, plus PR wise AMD get's a huge burst from Apple's positive opinion in the marketplace. First apple was Chic and an underdog against Windows, next can be AMD. I think this has a lot more potential than any of the other mentions if you are looking for a shocker.
You're over-simplfying it there. Think Different.
I say buy Autodesk - get a multitouch AutoCAD program out.
Autodesk puts them into millions of corporate pockets (including mine at work). We use AutoCAD and Maya.
Imagine - Renderman included in every license of Maya...
They just released a AutoCAD for Mac (which my boss is looking into), and Maya has been on Mac for ages.
This way the OS would be creativity focused like it used to be and it can run windows apps so the business sector will not feel left out.
Seriously this would make for a very interesting buy.
AT&T are one carrier out of many many carriers worldwide that Apple deals with. Sometimes American's forget that. Besides, their market CAP is over three times the cash Apple has.
Since this is basically a "buy this" thread
I say buy Autodesk - get a multitouch AutoCAD program out.
Autodesk puts them into millions of corporate pockets (including mine at work). We use AutoCAD and Maya.
Imagine - Renderman included in every license of Maya...
They just released a AutoCAD for Mac (which my boss is looking into), and Maya has been on Mac for ages.
Way too niche for Apple, considering it's 7.5B. When you consider Twitter, if available, would be worth about $4B.
That's about the most logical reason for Apple to buy FaceBook I can think of... and obviously it's pretty lame... just to be clear Apple buying FaceBook would be a ridiculous move.
I think the first 5 commenters covered it all. FB is not a long term investment for Apple and would be grossly over-valued the moment. In the last 12 months I've seen valuations range from $3B ro $33B.
If Apple wanted the could easily build it's own FaceBook leveraging iOS devices, MobileMe to get started with an extension to other devices via iTunes. They could do so having learned from FB's many mistakes and short comings. I'm not saying in doing so Apple would kill off FaceBook like FB has to MySpace, but it's entirely possible over time... which goes back to FB being a horrible acquisition target.
Apple could buy Adobe. It'd be a good move for Apple and bring them back towards broader and more advanced software development in house for computers. It would probably help Apple's floundering software division, meaning both Pro Tolls (Final Cut, Logic) and consumer apps (Pages, Numbers, etc...). That said I think Adobe is doing fine on there own and so I'm not really hoping for this.
I see acquiring something like NetFlix more likely... something the value being leveraging their existing content distribution deals into iTunes.
I could also see Apple getting into cloud services like AWS, RackSpace and Google... and no I'm not suggesting they'd target consumers with cloud services, I think they'd be targeting businesses in direct competition with the existing players.
Finally, Apple has had a big couple years and I frankly think they'd be fine slowing down and refining what they've created, rather than start a big new project.