“Historically, Steve Jobs has not been the acquisitive type. Since he returned to Apple as chief executive in 1997, the company has bought only 11 small companies, far fewer than Silicon Valley counterparts such as Cisco Systems or Hewlett-Packard,” Peter Burrows reports for BusinessWeek. “Google has bought 11 companies in just the past 18 months.”
Burrows reports, “Last year, Apple quietly hired a Goldman Sachs investment banker, Adrian Perica, to help the company cut deals. Multiple sources close to Apple say they believe Perica is the first dedicated M&A specialist on staff. The company has also stepped up its pace of acquisitions: Three of Jobs’ 11 deals have come in the past five months, including the $275 million purchase of Quattro Wireless, the largest buy since Jobs’ return.”
MacDailyNews Note: Actually, according to reports, PA Semi cost Apple $3 million more at $278 million.
Burrows continues, “Apple lost out on a deal last year, in part because of its improvisational approach. As the company was negotiating with the mobile advertising firm AdMob last fall, Google swooped in and quickly bought the company for $750 million.”
“Perica helped make sure Apple didn’t make the same mistake with its next deal, say four sources familiar with the situation. Late last year, Apple entered the bidding for the online music site Lala.com, after Google and several other potential acquirers had gotten involved. The company moved unusually quickly, closing the deal in a few weeks, rather than the more typical two to three months,” Burrows reports. “It was clear that Apple didn’t want to lose out again, and especially not to Google.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
OnLive!!!
ADBE
Mkt cap 18.84B
Adobe : Apple :: boat anchor : fighter jet
Fun with analogies. Got any others?
I think Apple should buy out Dell and then lease OS X and get serious in the market. If they bought dell they could get into the PC market and server market.
Another good buy would be Adobe or Sony too.
Apple and Google still friends. Google is the second front for Apple to attack microsoft (And Steve Ballmer is Apple’s secret agent to work in the inside).
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Why else did Google came out with a phone just good enough to take micrsoft out of the market but not enough to compete with the iPhone? And apple is going to reduce Yahoo’s market share to return the favor to Google..
Currently APPL is down .5%
PALM is up 5.75%, Mkt cap: 2.28 B.
PALM : APPL :: sinking life boat : luxury ocean liner
.:.
A tie up with Redbox or TIVO would be a blockbuster. BTW the acq. doesn’t have to use cash, could be some or all stock as well. But with the pile of cash on Apples balance sheet, it’s much easier closing cash deals in a hurry than stock / cash deals.
There might be some interesting morsels being carved out of Motorola as well.
And this is why Apple has that huge treasure chest of cash on hand. So shut up, idiotic analysts and clueless shareholders! The people at Apple know what they’re doing.
@cashxx
In one post you named 3 of the 4 worst companies in tech. When making acquisitions, the trick is to find diamonds in rough, companies that are going up, not bloated companies that are doing their best impression of the Titanic.
While still not a large amount of companies, there have been more than 11. I find 18 since Jobs returned.
Try buying TiVo or the DVR box maker that they use. Replace them with customized Mac mini DVR.
I am glad somebody pointed out the original iPhone is the comparison, not the current. The iPhone is established, so comparing a new item against it’s established competition and saying “when the most current version of this established product went on sale, it sold XX, while this brand new thing nobody has ever heard of sold YY”.
I don’t know why MDN keeps choosing to use the 3GS sales instead of the 1G sales.
I understand people compare Safari to IE, but in all fairness IE has been around for 20+ years. iPhone is only 3-4 years old, so it’s still an infant (the whole category is still at toddler).
The fact that 1G iPhone sold 500K units compared to 20K by Nexus One is much more telling to me, than the fact that iPhone 3GS sold millions.
Adobe? Dell? Give me a break. Apple is not about to buy those frigtards. Any time you make a large acquisition, you are taking on a huge number of employees and their (often dysfunctional) corporate culture. The result: the culture of the acquired company often passive/aggressively dilutes all that you try to do to build a great corporate culture.
If you want to know what can happen from a large merger, ladies and gentlemen, I proudly present AOL Time-Warner.
Instead, where it makes sense, Apple will from time to time make small acquisitions of companies whose technologies or key personnel can help Apple accelerate, be more competitive or to enter new markets. Fingerworks and PA Semi are two good examples. The acquisitions are small enough that they barely cause a ripple on Wall $treet, but in time, have often returned a tremendous ROI.
What Wall $treet wants to see are the big mergers and acquisitions like your wet dream Adobe. They’re typically train wrecks, often destroying once promising companies (AOL being a prime example). Wall $treet could not care less. All that matters to those whores are the fees and commissions they could rake in from being the broker and underwriter to such M&A;activity. The media love big M&A;because they are so clueless that it helps them think up juicy new garbage articles to slap on the cover of Fortune magazine. Then, you get a complete hack journalist like Fortune’s Andy Serwer to write clueless articles about the synergies that will result from the latest megamerger. This is the same twit who lionized the executives from Enron about six months before the company totally imploded.
So, don’t get me started. I think big M&A;deals are about as useful and long-lasting as most Hollywood celebrity marriages. Typically, big mergers are the sign of a corporation with no new ideas. Apple is the exceptional company that it is by creating not just new products, but new industry categories. It’s called organic growth. All this BS about mergers is just to dress up accounting spreadsheets. But typically, the only savings that result is by the wonderful word “synergies”, a slick term that means they will shitcan about 5,000 unlucky souls to cut the bottom line.
And you wonder why we’re in the mess that we’re in economically? The only people that win in a big M&A;deal is Wall $treet.
Adobe my ass.
Speaking of buyouts, look at Palm stock this morning. All the techs are down but it’s up 4.5%. Methinks someone knows something… like a buyout offer is forthcoming.
Apple and Dell use the same manufacturers in China, so there is no point to buying Dell.
No need to spend hard cash on companies to “protect” innovation.
When you fail to move forward through innovation in your area then you go buy the competition to shut down the threats.
Adobe with Macromedia, GoLive, ColdFusion….
Microsoft with… well everything
Now if you acquire to open up new areas and then innovate there then you are closer to Apple & Google
I would buy Clearwire and make it better. Now you have the ability to controll the delivery of your content. Cut out the cable companies!
I am sick to death of Google buying perfectly good companies and then letting them languish or die, with no tech support and no new features. Make no mistake: Google is the new Microsoft. Google is the new enemy. Google is all evil all the time.
Apple has, in fact entered the P.C. (Personal Computer) market with it’s entire line of Apple computers.
Apple also has it’s hand in the server market with Xserve and Mac OS X Server. ( http://www.apple.com/xserve )
I work at a place that uses Xserves; they’re awesome.
proofread fail. sorry
1- AutoDesk would make a nice fit with Filemaker, already an Apple subsidiary company. It would also make sure Apple gets properly supported with critical Pro Apps. Market Cap @ This Time $5.96 Billion.
2- SiriusXM would give Apple it’s own network of satellites to deliver in car telematics, iPods, Apple TVs, iPhones and yes Macs data, music or even video- bypassing ISPs in a push mode. This could be an ingenious way around data caps from ISPs. Now that the companies are merged, Apple could use Sirius’ channels for the existing type of service (iTunes Satellite Radio Anyone) and dedicate XMs to data delivery. Very doable.
Market Cap @ This Time $2.57 Billion. Apple couldn’t build this kind of capacity for many times the price.
Apple will continue to build its delivery of content business.
They wont MAKE the content, or buy the content makers, just have the best delivery system.
It started with Music, its beginning to get bigger with Movies, it will soon have to go to Print Media (in digital form, obviously) including books, magazines, etc.
They will continue to develop and produce digital media devices because, finally, the world of paper and cable companies and a slew of other non-digital slugs is ending.
Apple will be looking at companies that will help their targeted areas of business.
Dell? Sony? Adobe? Waste of time and cash.
I want Apple and Google to spin off a joint venture with their excess cash and buy Sprint. That way they don’t dilute their gross margins too much. Then, turn Sprint into an all data 4G network. Sell unlimited data for $20 a month, or whatever it takes to make a small profit, and calls will be voip. That would kill Verizon and AT&T;.
BUY NVIDIA
Apple should buy Nvidia market cap $10B and get it to make high spec Graphic cards just for Mac’s.
This will allow them to differentiate the Hardware from PC, giving users high spec graphic not available for PC