“Apple now has $178 billion in cash,” Paul R. La Monica reports for CNN. “Sure, a big chunk of that is held overseas and a large amount of it is technically considered ‘marketable securities,’ but those can be turned into cash quickly.”
“So what will Apple do with it? Probably continue to spend on research and development, share buybacks, dividends and maybe some small acquisitions,” La Monica reports. “In other words, pretty routine stuff.”
La Monica reports, “But what if Apple wanted to do something really bold with all that iMoney? Just for fun, here’s a list of companies Apple could buy … and still have some change left over.”
• Disney
• Amazon and Netflix
• IBM
• Uber and Tesla
• MasterCard
• Vias
• Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat and Pinterest
Read more in the full article here.
I always said that Apple should be a credit card bank and own its own cell network Applepay is close, but they can get deeper.
ApplePay as it becomes more and more integrated with iBeacon is going to create a whole new type of company in the finance/marketing sectors I would say.
No reason. Other companies handle that and Apple doesn’t have to deal with all the regulations for them or develop new technologies (especially in mobile communications).
As for the rest of the list, ho hum, same old “I gotta write a story about Apple’s pile o cash” junk.
Buy Disney, if not just to get ESPN and Pixar
And all of the content for distribution by Apple.
Buy Microsoft sell off any good bits, if the microscope is big enough, and put the rest of it out of its misery
That will happen anyway. No need to throw good money on MS to make it happen sooner.
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Greece…
You had to throw Greece in there didn’t ya?
They could buy the state of California. They only need to get the votes of the politicians in the State and declare the independency. And the new governor will report to Tim Cook.
Not even close – despite the FUD spread by conservative “news” sources, California’s healthy economy would be ranked 8th in the world if it was an independent country. By any measure, the book value of California is in the many trillions of dollars. No other state in the US is even close. That said, I’d gladly replace Governor Moonbeam with Tim Cook.
Moonbeam.. I guess you can’t find a real objection to Governor Brown.
Apple should buy Levi’s, Smithfield Meats, Ford, and Jack Daniels, coz these are things I like.
And yet, Apple won’t make their own remote app for Apple TV work with iOS 8. Wonder why they have such a hoard.
I know this might not make much sense to you, but I honestly believe Apple stays away from a lot stuff to allow third-party companies to make some money. Apple doesn’t seem to be all that interested in small potatoes. It probably wouldn’t take much for Apple to make gaming controllers for its own products but why not give Apple partners a chance to make some money. There’s almost nothing Apple can’t afford to do so there must be some other reason it doesn’t try to do everything. It’s fairly obvious Apple is not trying to be like Samsung.
I’ve been using apple’s ios remote app with appleTV without problems. Typing search terms on the ip6+ is so much faster than with the appletv on-screen keyboard
What kinds of issues r u having
With that amount of reserve cash, Apple might be able to last at least another year before doomsday strikes.
/s
Every time a genius pundit says Apple is in deep trouble for some vague reason I have to pinch myself and I’m getting black and blue all over. I wonder how long it would take for most companies to burn through that sort of cash amount.
Apple should launch its own network of dozens of low-earth-orbit satellites. Or buy the Iridium constellation and enhance it. Imagine the possibilities…
And then there’s “Apple Robotics.” I think Apple will do it differently than imagined by sci-fi. Think of Apple Watch as the first Apple “robot.” It provides specific functions, under the control of the user’s iPhone. Similarly, future Apple robots that provide “physical” functions are optimized for performing those functions, while future iPhones, iPads, and Macs (or their replacements) are optimized to be the “brains” of the operation.
Do we really want Apple making any big acquisitions after the waste of money that was Beats?