“The last time I did this comparison was in June after the end of the second quarter,” Horace Deidu reports for Asymco.
“In summary, in June Apple’s cash was about 53% of the sum of competing phone vendor enterprise values. Today it’s about 61%,” Deidu reports. “Excluding Samsung, Apple could buy the industry and still have $25 billion left over. This makes the claim that ‘Apple could buy the industry’ even more believable.”
Deidu reports, “This analysis is mainly academic. It does not imply that any such transaction will take place. As the purchase of Motorola shows, control has a premium and individual buyers may be less “rational” than markets. What it does show however is that the entire industry is in a state of crisis. Valuations for phone companies are collapsing and two major brands (Motorola and Sony Ericsson) are being absorbed and could disappear.”
Read more in the full article here.
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Oh please! Oh please!
Pretty please????!!!!!!
Why buy the cow when they pay you for to take the milk….
Exactly.
If ATT cant get a merger with Tmobile going I don’t see how apple could buy the industry.
Oh you mean in fantasy land? check
AAPL sure isn’t as big today as it was 2 months ago. But it’s still big. Looks like its going to spiral down some more. If it drops below 362 today (and we’re close) look out below. Unless you’re shorting AAPL it looks like the easy, steady money in AAPL may be a thing of the past. That’s too bad because it’s been a revenue generating machine for a long time. No matter how good or bad it is as a company, when the market Want’s you to go down then brother you are going down. Maybe it will come back a little with a Santa Claus rally but I don’t look for much. Bummer.
As it is, AAPL didn’t close below $362, so your prognostication of Doom is Epic Fail.
Ok. And your point is? I’m glad that it didn’t drop below 362. Asshole. Geez, you fanboys are pathetic. Get back down in mom’s basement.
“Unless you’re shorting AAPL it looks like the easy, steady money in AAPL may be a thing of the past.”
Hahahahahaha, no. That isn’t how the game is played. Stockmarket crooks will punt AAPL back into the sky as surely as they dragged it down to Earth.
It will “surprisingly” rebound to somewhere upwards of $420 a share, hover there for a while, fall back to down $360 territory, then rebound again. Repeat. It goes a little higher and crashes a little less each time.
@dude
“This analysis is mainly academic. It does not imply that any such transaction will take place.”
It goes up. It goes down. You are stating the obvious. As am I. It has gone up consistently but may not going forward! Geez! Hey Skippy, go try to impress your 10 year old friends. Ha,ha,ha. Ho,ho,ho.
Yes, Steve was absolutely brilliant. But in another sense, another phone company COULD have developed something like the iPhone long ago. But the whole industry was satisfied to produce barely workable, clunky, “it’ll do” rubbish. We had what was supposed to be a fairly decent phone before – just for emergencies. After trying to work the voicemail on three separate occasions, we just gave up and pretended it didn’t exist.
On the other hand – when I bought my first iPhone, my 9-year-old son, without having ever seen the phone or even any ads for it, had worked out by the time we drove six blocks that there was a camera in it and how to take a photo, and that there was a map function and how to show where we were. And even now, none of them are showing any capability whatsoever of doing anything innovative; they’re all just wannabe iPhones. Any that go down, deserve to go down. I only feel sorry for the employees.
Apple has enough cash money to do a lot of things, but they’re only making minor use of it. Most companies would have been buying up smaller companies left and right if they had that sort of cash lying around. I suppose it isn’t always that easy to integrate one company into another and Apple must have very tight teamwork to produce as much as they do with so few of an amount of employees.
It would be nice if Apple could get into some other type of business other than consumer electronics, but I guess that wouldn’t work very well. After hearing that Apple has zero innovation value on Wall Street, I’ve just about given up trying to figure what Apple needs to do to become a powerful company for investors. Maybe they should take up whatever IBM is doing since a dude like Buffet is willing to invest in it. I hate seeing Apple going down without a fight.
See the entry 20th position down from here for a possible answer to your dilemma.
My only complaint about Apple iPhone is that it is so damned desirable that some rotten bustard (and I don’t mean the bird) asked my daughter what time it was and snatched her iPhone from her hands and took off with it. $200 on a three year contract and now will have to be replaced with an unsubsidized phone.
sorry that happened to your daughter
^ My nano was stolen that way. This is why I’m getting a gun when I turn 21…
If you are serious, then I suggest doing it the legal way: Get a concealed carry permit and any training needed to meet the requirements of your area.
Carrying a firearm isn’t something to be taken lightly. It puts a real burden of responsibility on your shoulders, one that many people aren’t comfortable with. It’s not as casual an endeavor as television shows make it out to be.
As for shooting someone in the back for swiping a gizmo like an iPod or iPhone, that’s one of the quickest ways to land in jail and be sued for everything you’ll ever own.
Wounding or killing a person for that reason could never justify the consequences, no matter whether the perpetrator had it coming or not. Think about it.
The use of lethal force that can end in homicide is justified in the situation of immediate, otherwise unavoidable danger of death or grave bodily harm to the innocent. — Massad Ayoob
Something to keep in mind. Jacking an iPhone doesn’t quite meet that standard. Well, unless you’re in Texas 🙂
I think in Texas the order of precedence in theft is truck, hat, boots, dog, girlfriend, beer. All are shooting offenses.
Left out a few critical items:
…truck, hat, boots, iPad, dog, iPhone, girlfriend, iPod, beer…
Wrong order. Hat first, then beer. All of the rest are ok.
I think beer comes before girlfriend. And dog is probably right after truck.
I once bought a cheap RadioShack “Walkman” because the Sony ones were being stolen … and being poor, I was (sadly) rationalizing being cheap.
Bottom line – I suffered with a cheap-ass player … until someone broke my car window and stole it.
You screwed yourself and got screwed by someone else anyway. Double whammy. That sucks, dude.
Happy Thanksgiving everybody
I think it would be foolish for Apple to get into owning or creating a network at this time. It’s just not there thing and it’s focus and resources would be over extended as well. Apple is a forward thinking company that goes out and creates new products or vastly improves curret ones. Many companies in the US don’t really do that anymore and are happy with the slow pace and standard product cycle. I mean look at the car industry and energy companies…..slow and have to be forced to innovate because of changing conditions they have caused. Apple is wise to stick with what they know best and should actively push other companies to innovate cause they have the products and drive to do it.
Apple could revolutionize the auto business. Well, Steve coulda……
Buy the industry? Please Apple, no! Find some way to lay it to waste and leave those “orifices” gasping.
With Apple already taking the lion’s share of the industry’s profits, buying the rest of the industry would fail the cost-benefit analysis.
If Apple bought ATT, they could keep the monogrammed towels.
Horace is just pointing out that Apple has the capability from their cash position. It only means that Apple *could* but they wouldn’t and most definitely won’t.
My god, he said for illustrational purposes only…
Implying Apple COULD afford to buy the industry sends a strong message to the telcom industry, wall street, the gubmint, and anyone else who should realize how good business and the economy could actually be if Big Business:
PUT PEOPLE BEFORE PROFITS!
Actually, Apple puts products before profit. But Apple does seem to value its employees, as well.
Actually, Steve Jobs put himself first. If he wanted a new product, it was designed to suit himself and those involved, then if they liked it, it became a product.
uhhh, in the real world, you have to have profits to create the products that people want to buy.
You have to have both in a balance.
The theory and indeed the practice that Apple have exhibited is that if you focus on the quality of the product then the profits will simply happen. It should be patently obvious to you from the article that Apple have most of the profits – the way they got them is by focussing on the product.
Incidentally you can’t have profits in advance. By definition they must come after you have produced the product and put it out there: they are profits for this reason.
In a dream it can. But not in real life. Even with a trillion Dollar cash reserve it’s impossible. Not while the US government and it’s crooked members of congress as something to say about.
It is not “crooked” of the U.S. Government to (with exceptions like the NFL, NBA, etc.) prevent the execution of a buyout or merger that would result in an anticompetitive domination or monopoly of an industry. If you studied history at all, you would understand that the U.S. had some very bad experiences with industry monopolies or colluding oligopolies. This is a policy that is intended to promote capitalism through healthy competition.
Monopolies represent instances in which unbridled capitalism can be a bad thing for regular folks in the short term, and everyone in the long term.
+2
“If you studied history at all, you would understand that the U.S. had some very bad experiences with industry monopolies or colluding oligopolies.”
No. No. And no. The super-rich really care about the general population. They don’t need regulations. It’s only market forces that corners them into making cancer sticks, faulty tires, the Love Canal, lead in gasoline, red dye #5 and a million other poisonous or physically dangerous products.
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Why buy out companies in the same industry? In theory, it looks like it’s possible, but in reality it wouldn’t pass muster with the regulating authorities; and also it would create a lot of jealousies and animosities among Apple-haters and detractors.
I will tell you what Apple needs to do: Apple needs to buy a bank. Banks’ assets are very cheap nowadays and Apple needs to choose a bank that doesn’t have too many encumbrances on its financial statement. By doing so, Apple could force changes in another critical industry. Banks have deviated from its fundamental duty to serve. It was supposed to help a nation to administer its wealth prudently, but instead what we have seen in the last 30 years is that bank have turned into veritable casinos. Instead of preserving wealth, banks have created all sorts of risky, speculative financial instruments. Banks have become greedy to the extent that they gouge their own customers by enticing customers to new services and then imposing exorbitant fees to service them.
Apple could lead the industry by forcing it to go back to fundamentals. Apple doesn’t need to follow the herd of greedy bankers to chase after fools’ gold. Apple needs to attract the best people in the industry and train them to foremost serve its customers in an unorthodox way from the rest of the industry. It had been doing this with its present form of business where its counterparts have been led astray by Wall Street.
Apple Bank (assuming Apple buys a bank) must separate traditional banking activities from its investment arm. Apple could introduce new services that does not rely on gimmicks and speculation. With its billions of loose change, Apple would have an advantage over its debt-ridden rivals and earned better returns by investing its huge pile of cash.
Sanity needs to return to the banking industry and Apple could be the vehicle to reintroduce fundamentals which the banking industry has abandoned a long time ago. If there is anyone who could pull a rabbit out of the bag, it’s Apple. Go for it, Apple.