“From the windows of the new Snap offices on Ocean Park Boulevard, Snap employees now see Gulfstreams, Bombardiers, and Embraer private jets, filled with billionaires from Silicon Valley swooping into town. Notably, however, some of these venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and technology C.E.O.s have their eye on Snap, too,” Nick Bilton writes for Vanity Fair. “Recently, they have been sharing a theory that Snap could one day see its headquarters move yet again, this time to Cupertino, right smack in the middle of Apple’s own office park. The reason, according to this conjecture, is that Apple could end up buying Snap.”
“From the moment it was espoused, I could see why it was a fascinating Silicon Valley parlor game: from a business perspective, such a partnership would make sense for both companies, perhaps more than any speculative partnership that I’ve heard about in years.,” Bilton writes. “For Apple, Snap could offer value on multiple levels. Beyond iMessages, which some see as a sort-of inclusionary social network, Apple doesn’t have a foothold of any kind in the space.”
“Like Snap, Apple covets teens. Apple and Snap also have a common competitor in Facebook, which Apple may begrudgingly need (it’s one of the reasons people are so addicted to its phones) and Snap straight up hates for consistently copying its product features. Apple, with its nearly $900 billion valuation, also has the money. The company currently has almost $300 billion—yes, billion—in cash on hand. Snap currently has a market cap of around $22 billion,” Bilton writes. “But perhaps most important, Snap appears key to Apple’s vision of itself and its future. Speaking on an earnings call last year, Tim Cook told investors that he sees the future of Apple as an augmented-reality company, and that A.R. will ‘change everything.'”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Buying Snap would be Apple’s largest ever acquisition, at least seven times larger than the $3 billion they paid for Beats Electronics.
That said, imagining Snap in the hands of a Google or Amazon, might lead Apple’s management to at least consider setting a new all-time acquisition record price.
Apple does mostly smart stuff, they have done some dumb stuff but they aren’t THAT dumb. No way that makes any sense. Snap does not fit into the walled garden…
“Apple does mostly smart stuff, they have done some dumb stuff but they aren’t THAT dumb.”
Then came Beats. $3 Billion for a company known for the worst headphones on the planet and are too music service.
The fanboys said it was all to get the geniuses behind the scam that was Beats, but we can see 4 years and Billions later that Apple has about 30 million suckers customers.
“and a me too music service”.
Beats may not be great headphones, but the business is EXTREMELY profitable (partly because the headphones are crap, but with obscene profit margins), and has paid for itself easily
and then occasionally produce a lucid, reasonable post?
You may have the Trump syndrome in which you feel compelled to say crazy things just to get attention. It is also called early childhood.
…also Facebook WISHES it was Apples competitor. That one trick pony is slowly coming to the end of its run. When all that is left is weird uncles and grandparents on their with no one paying – Facebook will eventually take its place next to Myspace and Yahoo.
Which one trick pony? The iPhone store d.b.a. Apple or the evil ad agency d.b.a. Facebook?
Seriously!? You think Apple is a one trick pony? I’m not sure you understand what that phrase means?
If the iPhone business hit a wall Apple would not be able to sustain it’s overhead with the remaining business operations.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/382260/segments-share-revenue-of-apple/
One Trick Pony:
A performing animal (especially a pony) that knows only one trick. (idiomatic, by extension) A person or group noteworthy for only a single achievement, skill, or characteristic.
Apple most recently reported about 70% of revenue from iPhone sales. Everything else (Mac, services, Beats, iTunes, accessories) is 30%.
As I said- a One Trick Pony.
iPhone is now only 60 percent of Apple’s revenue, and that is decreasing. Apple will be fine. Your statements are incorrect. Also Statista is a very bad source of information. This is well known.
Your acvuststion is incorrect. See the link at the end to Apple’s public release for Q1
As to the rest, we’ll see. The market for expensive cell phones is limited, the PC market is shrinking, the market for rented music services has not shown itself to be a replacement for purchases worldwide. The growth areas of IT tech are cloud computing, IoT and content & Apple has yet to show itself anything but an also ran in these.
The percentage I listed is verified in Apple’s Q1 statement. The iPhone was 69.74% of revenue.
Click to access Q1_FY18_Data_Summary.pdf
@ Michael
DavGreg is a troll Michael and mostly smirked at… he wont go away… just don’t read it bull crap.
Why WOULD Apple buy Snap? Their stock price isn’t doing that hot, and the whole idea of Snap is going by the wasteside. Or am I missing something?
Maybe Apple would want to repeat the failures that they had with PING!
TechCrunch, 19 hr ago… “Snap is reportedly laying off around 100 employees.”
This is just some bozo analyst trying to gin up their stock price. Fake news.
Apple’s version of Snap is already so much larger than Snap, and it’s much better monetized.
Messages is one of the world’s largest social networks. And Apple makes a killing every time a customer chooses an iPhone partially because of messages.
People keep forgetting Apple is already quite dominant in these “hot” areas of tech (music subscriptions, streaming media, messaging, photography, wearables, etc.). It’s just that they do it differently, and better (stickier, better integrated, profitable). Apple’s problem is that these technologies are so customer-centric, investors don’t see them as valuable businesses in their own right, the way they get all hot and bothered about things like Snap, Alexa, Fitbit, Glass, Instagram, WeChat, Netflix, etc.
Snap is a “camera company.” With that in view, and the fact that the camera has been replaced with the iPhone… this armchair quarterback says that would be a good play.