“Apple is expected to release a smartwatch this fall, which should provide a boost,” Matt McFarland reports for The Washington Post. “But Francis McInerney, a consultant at North River Ventures, has another idea for how Apple can keep growing. Why not buy Disney?
“‘The logic is so great this could happen tomorrow,’ McInerney said. ‘The two companies have an identical way of thinking in complementary markets. There’s nothing they do that competes with another. And yet combined this would be a powerhouse deal in the imagining,'” McFarland reports. “Although an Apple-Disney union has been the subject of Wall Street speculation for years, McInerney believes the shift of content to the cloud will force Disney to act. ‘This changing structure, this Gutenberg-like tectonic shift in human behavior based on the cloud’s ability to offer unlimited computing at marginal cost, says to Disney, ‘We’ve got to be on the platform to grow in the new space,” McInerney said.”
“McInerney imagines the two combined as a ‘Netflix on steroids,’ in which Apple would benefit from finding ways to monetize Disney’s content offerings, and Disney would have a safe and profitable place in the emerging, unbundled world of TV and video to peddle its wares. Having Disney under the Apple umbrella would also be an asset if Apple ever launches a television set,” McFarland reports. “At the same time, there are plenty of good reasons to think this deal will never happen. Apple rarely makes splashy acquisitions. The $3 billion it recently paid for Beats is the company’s largest acquisition. Disney’s market cap is $143 billion, and its shareholders would expect a premium on top of that price. Apple currently holds $151 billion in cash and marketable securities…”
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MacDailyNews Take: Enderlean.