“A top Apple executive raised the prospect of the iPhone maker buying Time Warner at a meeting with the owner of HBO, CNN and Warner Brothers, according to three people who were briefed on it,” Matthew Garrahan and James Fontanella-Khan report for The Financial Times.
“Eddy Cue, who oversees critical Apple businesses such as the iTunes store, Apple Music and iCloud, broached the idea of a bid at a meeting at the end of last year with Olaf Olafsson, Time Warner’s head of corporate strategy, the people said,” Garrahan and Fontanella-Khan report. “Discussions about Apple buying Time Warner did not get beyond a preliminary stage and never included Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, nor his Time Warner counterpart, Jeff Bewkes, people familiar with the matter said.”
“Apple intends to ramp up its spending on original content to ‘several hundred million dollars a year,’ according to people familiar with the matter. It has also not ruled out acquiring a media company, a person close to Apple told the Financial Times.,” Garrahan and Fontanella-Khan report. “Time Warner would be an obvious fit… [with] highly sought-after assets: HBO, which produces Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley and Veep; Warner Bros, Hollywood’s largest producer of films and television shows; and Turner, which owns several cable channels and holds the rights to NBA basketball.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: What we wrote of Apple’s burgeoning cash pile over three years ago:
Maybe it’s insurance in the face of recalcitrant content providers (“last chance: sign the deal or we’ll buy you with petty cash”)? — MacDailyNews, February 21, 2013
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Apple should use their cash pile to create some much needed leverage to finally get their Apple TV subscription bundle(s) up and running even if all they do is flash their cash around. — MacDailyNews, January 14, 2016
SEE ALSO:
Obviously, Apple could buy Time Warner, but they shouldn’t – January 14, 2016
Apple eyeing Time Warner assets to ease launch of a stand-alone streaming TV service – January 13, 2016
It’s quite possible that without Steve Jobs’ help, Eddy Cue couldn’t get ink in a stationery store. – MacDailyNews, November 5, 2015
Tim Cook and his crew of lazy, gay, bumbling bozos aren’t going to do sh*t!
We all know that anything that requires real work and true thought processes is out of the realm of possibility for these greedy, idiotic clowns!
Maybe you should’ve thought about acquisitions before your incompetence allowed you to piss away billions in AAPL stock market value?
Ya think!
Wow. Just a little homophobic?
This board is to discuss Apple news – please keep your fear, and hatred to yourself.
TW has a lot a great properties but not as great as when they had their cable service… that would have been some deal. Missed opportunity.
Well this explains a lot:
“Eddy Cue, who oversees critical Apple businesses such as the iTunes store, Apple Music and iCloud…”
This is starting to get interesting.
The pocket is starting to heat up.
I think culturally Disney is a good property, and would fold nicely into Apple. However, if Disney is an easy ball player, why waist money on them? Time Warner could be a different story and I don’t know enough to say otherwise.
GOOD JOB CUE! good thought, now I understand them wanting to sell out and finally merging.
For some reason these guys have stood in the way of providing a lá cart services, fine. Buy them and do what you want, and get rid of those faces you see at the negotiating table, starting with the CEOs. Or make them realize they could be looking for jobs or even better working under you. They must figure they would become to big to buy.
Cue, I didn’t know you had it in you kid, hmm. You know Tim maybe leaving soon, have any interest in being CEO? Or did Tim tell you to put this on the table. hmm!
Well, it didn’t seem to work. Ok, fine. So, on to creating and or buying content, and Apple needs to role out its own fiber and wireless network. Apple could gain the expertise to do it.
So does this mean a large repatriation of Apple’s funds from outside the US or another round of debt via bonds?