Saturday, October 30, 2004
When was the last time Apple bought out another company?
Over on the iPod Garage, guest columnist David Gregory recently made a case for Apple acquiring XM Satellite Radio, and it got me thinking: when was the last time Apple actually acquired another company?
There's been a rather long list of acquisitions in the Jobs era, but they've generally all been small companies that we'd barely even heard of, if at all. It seems that Steve prefers small, highly-targeted acquisitions that manage to fill a specific need more quickly and easily than if Apple had tried to re-invent the wheel in-house, and has generally stayed away from larger, riskier acquisitions that would change the face of Apple as we know it overnight.
And it seems like, for the most part, he's been proven to be correct over the long term. I mean, does anyone still think that Apple should have paid billions for Universal Music? I'd say Apple did OK by building its own internal music division from the ground up, and doing so didn't cost the company a cent.
Anyway, I guess the real question here is, with the share price of Apple's stock surging to heights not seen in years, and with five billion dollars in cash sitting in the bank, should Apple currently be targeting any outside companies (large or small) for acquisition?
And I'll leave the answer up to you guys. Seeing as we now have forums on this site, feel free to post your ideas about acquisitions on the forums, and to critique each other's acquisition ideas. I've created a forum thread just for it.
Over on the iPod Garage, guest columnist David Gregory recently made a case for Apple acquiring XM Satellite Radio, and it got me thinking: when was the last time Apple actually acquired another company?
There's been a rather long list of acquisitions in the Jobs era, but they've generally all been small companies that we'd barely even heard of, if at all. It seems that Steve prefers small, highly-targeted acquisitions that manage to fill a specific need more quickly and easily than if Apple had tried to re-invent the wheel in-house, and has generally stayed away from larger, riskier acquisitions that would change the face of Apple as we know it overnight.
And it seems like, for the most part, he's been proven to be correct over the long term. I mean, does anyone still think that Apple should have paid billions for Universal Music? I'd say Apple did OK by building its own internal music division from the ground up, and doing so didn't cost the company a cent.
Anyway, I guess the real question here is, with the share price of Apple's stock surging to heights not seen in years, and with five billion dollars in cash sitting in the bank, should Apple currently be targeting any outside companies (large or small) for acquisition?
And I'll leave the answer up to you guys. Seeing as we now have forums on this site, feel free to post your ideas about acquisitions on the forums, and to critique each other's acquisition ideas. I've created a forum thread just for it.
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