“Without Steve Jobs, Apple Inc. (AAPL) may start to embrace dealmaking after spending less on acquisitions than any of its biggest competitors,” Danielle Kucera and Rita Nazareth report for Bloomberg.
“Jobs, who transformed the near-bankrupt personal-computer also-ran into the world’s largest technology company, used less than a billion dollars for takeovers in the past decade as he unveiled the iPod, iPhone and iPad,” Kucera and Nazareth report. “Apple’s largest U.S. rivals have shelled out more than $15 billion on average to buy companies over the same span, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Microsoft Corp. has lost a fifth of its value even after spending 10 times as much as Apple on acquisitions.”
Kucera and Nazareth report, “Boosting acquisitions in entertainment, patents and security with its $28 billion cash hoard may help Apple fend off Google Inc. (GOOG) and Samsung Electronics Co. without Jobs, the University of North Carolina and Stewart Capital said. ‘Time will come for acquisitions for sure,’ Arvind Malhotra, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, who has taught Apple’s business strategies for a decade, said in a telephone interview. Jobs ‘always grew from within. If lack of his vision and availability of his position causes the future pipeline not to be there, that’s when the acquisition model comes into play. They’re sitting on a cash pile,’ he said.”
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