“Every three months, Apple’s quarterly earnings release triggers speculation about what Apple could or should do with its giant cash hoard. At last count (Q3 2017), ‘Apple’s cash position,’ according to its SEC filings, amounted to $262 billion,” Frederic Filloux writes for Monday Note. “To put things in perspective, with that amount of money, Apple could acquire General Electric, Samsung or Royal Dutch Shell.”
Filloux writes, “For Apple, why would acquiring Sony make sense?”
#1 Cornering the imaging sensor supply
#2 Access to Sony’s film, TV shows, and music catalog
#3 Connecting the PlayStation ecosystem to the iPhone
#4 Miscellaneous: “There are scores of components in the Sony empire that could benefit the Apple product line,” Filloux writes. “To name but a few: Sony TV sets, which could be a great fit to the Apple TV box; Sony’s VR gear to be integrated with the iPhone; or a lineup of monitors based on Sony products.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Sony’s market value is currently just under $47.66 billion. It would be a doable acquisition, although it’d be playing in a completely different league (Apple’s dollar record is some $3 billion for Beats).
As Playstation Vue users, though — that’s Sony’s horribly-named streaming service which we use via an Apple TV app, not a video game console — the marriage of Apple TV with Playstation Vue is certainly intriguing. There are, of course, myriad other synergies, but imagining the integration of the two multinational corporations and their cultures is daunting to say the least.
Exit quote:
I used to say that Apple should be the Sony of this business, but in reality, I think Apple should be the Apple of this business. — Steve Jobs, 1998