“As Apple’s stock climbed to its fifth record in March on Tuesday, and it’s 11th record this year, it’s a good time to take a serious look at what the tech giant should take on next,” Michael Wade writes for Fortune.
“However, the Mac, iPad and iPhone – responsible for more than 85% of Apple’s revenue – are all under increasing pressure today, and the future looks harder, not easier. Consumers are resisting the urge to upgrade for marginal improvements,” Wade writes. “Competitors, like Samsung, ZTE and Huawei are closing the quality gap and are, in many cases, providing superior features at a lower cost. Plus, IOS is losing the global platform war with Android.”
MacDailyNews Take: Ill-informed and just plain wrong:
“The company has cash, and now is the time to spend it. It’s time to buy rather than build,” Wade writes. “So what should Apple’s next acquisition be?”
A list of possible and not-so-possible contenders includes:
• Pandora ($3 billion market cap)
• Tesla ($44 billion market cap)
• PayPal ($52 billion market cap)
• Activision Blizzard ($37 billion market cap)
• Netflix ($61 billion market cap)
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Advice based on falsehoods and incorrect assumptions is not sound advice.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Tesla? Seriously???
Elon is the best snake oil salesman I’ve ever seen.
How their stock hasn’t plummeted is mind boggling. Don’t get me wrong, I have an electric car myself (not a teals) but damn, talk about over promising and never or delivering late. What’s he’s latest brain storm, brain chips or something?
Ah, no.
It’s called PR and marketing. Elon has the general populace more jazzed about what his companies are planning to do than Apple, and yet his company is far less than 1/10th the market cap. He just publicly sets very aspirational goals, which is a good leadership trait, and eventually, he does achieve them. That’s being visionary, and Apple has needed one since Steve died. Tesla purchase to me is the only one that makes sense. Netflix also isn’t that bad, but the other’s are plain idiocy.
Their next acquisition (IMHO) will be Disney.
It is just my guess….but they have the content Apple needs and there obviously is a connection at the exec level.
There’s no need to buy Disney. It takes very little effort to create content. This has been proven time and time again over the years. Apple can and will get into original programming whenever they feel the need to. Netflix and Amazon have both proven it doesn’t take much, just the money to buy it or produce it. And Apple has a lot of cash. Furthermore, Apple doesn’t monetize user data, so the only revenue they’d get is from subscriptions.
If Apple buys any big company, it should and will be IBM not only for their enterprise/backend expertise, but also their R&D and tech prowess especially in the field of artificial intelligence, which is years ahead of anything Google, Amazon, Microsoft and even Apple could manage to produce. Sorry but these user facing “Assistants” are child’s play when compared to something like IBM’s Watson.
Well to me the time for original content was years ago as far as Apple is concerned, the lock on its AppleTV plans would have been far more easily broken if they had done a fraction of what Amazon or Netflix have done. Trying to compete with them now is all the more difficult and expensive to achieve with no guarantee of success I’m afraid.
As for buying IBM I think close cooperation is probably better than buying an organisation that in many ways is still the opposite to Apple nice fit in a way but I very much doubt that Apple would know where to start running them so would really have to run it as a separate entity anyway hoping they know what they are doing but with all the worries and distraction that if they go off course Apple will suffer. Fact is Watson is already beginning to work with siri (if so far baby steps) as things are and one presumes it would make massive sense to both parties to deepen and expand this slowly but surely, where logical, feasible and applicable, as time passes so that alone would not be a great reason for the buy in my opinion.
If it takes very little effort to create content then they would have done it years ago. Making content that people want to watch and continue to watch is actually difficult. Along with their own library and having purchased Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm Disney has a load of content that has been proven to make money over a long period of time.
Just show reruns of all the past greats. All this modern mess, junk.
Content is like starting a food service business a no margin black-hole.
If you didn’t buy Pixar or Marvel the first time around, it’s now to late….
Too.
👍
Disney’s market cap is 187B. Apple aren’t buying them.
Remember Apple are like the Borg but in a good way. They buy companies to assimilate new tech and expertise.
http://www.virtualscreen.net/movies/rumor-wall-street-says-apple-wants-buy-walt-disney-company/
Tesla? Come on, along with SpaceX, Musk is a man with a vision that could wither and die if it gets buried in the takeover jungle.
Big acquisitions always work.
lol!
• Pandora – Why? When Apple can do that biz model better with the need for a acquisition.
• Tesla – Don’t feel this one. Other than sharing batter fuel cell technology, what does Apple gain by that acquisition?
• PayPal – If Apple got off their ass (Pipeline Tim) and actually aggressively marketed ApplePay, then there is no need to acquire them. Apple needs to take ApplePay to the desktop users to use it like cash without a mobile device.
• Activision Blizzard – not sure why?
If it’s for games, then why not take .001% of that 37 billion and invest into NEW younger talent out of colleges and build a NEW team with NEW ideas and own that and build it.
• Netflix – why? Get rid of Eddie “i’m forever on vacation” Cue, who can’t negotiate the deals because he’s looked at like cousin Eddie from the movie Vacation. Get someone to help build the Apple TV eco-system, fix the limitations of the hardware, and market it better and Netflix with be out of business. So why invest into it?
I would acquire NONE on that list.
About the only 2 companies Apple should acquire I see from a creative side is Adobe and Avid. Mainly because they both would likely be cheaper, but the talent within those companies could also serve Apple well. Apple, Avid and Adobe ALL could use a better leader with can collectively utilize their talent better and faster.
I also think Amazon is onto something that will continue to build over time.
Disney is a steady thing as well with excellent revenue streams and assets.
Cant disagree with that take. For the life of me I really cant understand why Apple from years back have not considered taking Adobe on board. Before there may have been an argument against it because it was nothing new and exciting, more a defensive move against Microsoft milking off creatives blah, blah, blah though with Microsofts latest moves that might have been a big enough argument in its own right especially as Adobe still bows towards the PC more than Apple’s market in many cases.
However things have changed now and surely with Apples desire to push iOS and the iPad as a serious replacement for the PC such an acquisition would be vital in bringing that about. Adobe could not only be pushed to bring software to the iPad but could be involved in developing all manner of creative solutions specifically for it potentially reducing Apples own costs in trying to increase the iPads infiltration through other means and equally helping make seamless solutions between Mac and iPad/iPhone. Apple’s own software could equally play a large role in these developments together creating similar must have solutions as Office (sadly) is seen as being for many creating a separate multi pronged attack against both Microsoft and Android products and services.
It would as a side issue potentially shut out Microsoft (or later Android) from threatening Apples’s creative core buyers and made the whole Surface desktop strategy (amongst its other strategies) either pointless or much, much more expensive and difficult to make a rational option in the market place.
One more thing. Apple is way too laxed on updating their products. There is ZERO excuse for the lack of updates to their hardware and I expect every single person that comes across PLT to bust his balls over the poor leadership decisions he has done.
I’m thinking someone has investments or customer investments in:
• Pandora ($3 billion market cap)
• Tesla ($44 billion market cap)
• PayPal ($52 billion market cap)
• Activision Blizzard ($37 billion market cap)
• Netflix ($61 billion market cap)
What the tech giant should take on next year? Ha, talk about slow, what’s this journalist using for ink, molasses?
Tesla, though it’s never made a dime should be on Apple’s radar. It’s the only one that would benefit Apple in the long run. A lot of talent for Apple’s core business and a high quality reputation with sexy products.
Tesla is the only one (they build something) the rest are utterly worthless.
…blahblahblah…
NO IT’S NOT
That’s the moron path Eastman Kodak took. I got to watch first hand. Apple must simply progress along the path of their expertise and NOT take on that of which they have no comprehension or skill.
Damn, the modern world is full of BizTards. No wonder…