“Did you know that Apple has enough capital to buy out the entire mobile phone industry?” Markin Abras asks for MacDirectory. “That sounds crazy, but given the current valuations and market value of Apple’s competition, it would not be difficult for Apple to acquire every phone vendor except for Samsung with cash alone!”
Abras reports, “As the mobile market matures, will Apple start buying out its competitors in order to keep its share-holders happy? To answer this complex question, MacDirectory spoke with Apple analyst Horace Dediu.”
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Dediu: As the low end market peaks, there will be a natural tendency toward consolidation. LG may become a target and perhaps Motorola and Sony Ericsson. These brands still have value but their smartphone businesses are undifferentiated and their voice-oriented businesses will have excess capacity. So there will be some logic to seeing consolidation.
However, none of these scenarios suggest that Apple would have any benefit from acquiring assets from incumbent phone vendors. This is a tale of two markets: voice- and data-oriented; or alternatively, phoning vs. mobile computing. The markets are asymmetric and knowledge of one does not benefit much the other. Even the profit models are different where in one you’re selling essentially planned obsolescence and in the other platforms.
So the logic of Apple buying legacy incumbent phone businesses does not make much sense, but the consolidation of those vendors either through merger or through a pooling of interests does make quite a lot of sense.
Much more in the full article here.
I’d rather them buy the dumb pipes.
Why?
The mobile phone makers have nothing to offer Apple in terms of skill set, resources or facilities.
I have said this many times, Apple buy tech that adds to their own IP. They do not buy just to get a corner of the market.
I can’t see them buying a mobile carrier either. It would set them up against their partners and make them having to invest in the continuing infrastructure development.
The only value I could possibly see, and there are probably a big pile of negatives, is that in purchasing said vendors, they could acquire all the IP that everyone is suing everyone else over. The owners of the purchased vendors could all theoretically take the money and start up yet some more vendors, but they would then being doing it all without the IP, and would essentially have to do the research from scratch or license it all from Apple, and what good would that do them? If Apple held all the IP all other vendors would have to compete in the market with just what they could purchase or innovate by their own efforts or they would be sued out of business by Apple for IP theft.
It’s a pretty fantasy, though!
I knew this article was going to be stupid when I clicked on it but hey I’ll bite. If anything Apple’s competitors will need to be the ones buying to maintain market share. Like DogGone Too said, competitors have nothing to offer Apple.
What if Apple cut a deal with all US electric utility companies to use their lines for internet connection and then let all Macs (and a cheap gizmo for PCs) become transceivers. Suddenly we have a nationwide wireless data/voice network.
And maybe they buy a jumbo block of time from the cellular guys, if they’d sell it, to fill in the rural places.
In one fell swoop, gut the cable companies, and ISPs. Do away with data caps. And offer a Skype phone service.
Turn the world on its edge.
Slow news day I guess. It would be nice to get paid to write about asinine things for Apple to do with its money.
How about Apple buys companies that make computers? Can I get a paid to write my blog now?
Open Source fans would say no. For some reason, they expect they should get paid for their job or business, but other people should not.
Keep us posted on your search for an asinine-free blog, a quest worthy of Diogenes.
Meanwhile, here’s Steve Jobs suggesting what Apple’s deep pockets are for, in a meeting in which he voiced his misgivings about the Segway to its inventor, Dean Kamen.
“I understand the appeal of a slow burn, but personally I’m a big-bang guy. The risk with a fast burn is that it exposes you to your enemies. You’re going to need a lot of money to fight thieves.”
WHAT IF – WIFI MAX 4 can prove no wires – what a waist of money to have spent – LOL
apple could buy up all the homes in the US
…but it wouldnt make sense so they wont
Dumb pipes are not a good long term investment. In the long run, prices will be going down.
Besides, Apple has no interest in inquiring a business that would consume all their attention.
Apple is, practicaly, the entire mobile industry.