AppleInsider StaffCiting two anonymous sources with knowledge of the discussions, CNet reported Friday afternoon that an agreement between the two parties could be imminent. Parties with both companies declined to comment.
"Exactly what Apple intends to do with Lala remains unclear, but it would appear that Apple intends to offer some kind of streaming service to iTunes users," the report said. "Right now, Apple is the largest music store online or offline and Apple has made more money than any other music service by selling music downloads."
Weeks before its $750 million acquisition by Google, Apple reportedly met with mobile ad service AdMob. The nature and extent of those discussions remains unknown.
Apple has been described as awash in cash as it has accrued a massive $31.1 billion in cash and investments. That number, up 27 percent from a year prior as of August, is the largest net-cash sum of any technology company.
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55 Comments
The Zuning of the iPod?
A great move by Apple, which will hopefully lead to a streaming component for music via iTunes/iPods/iPhones, and also allow free full-length previews of music and even full albums.
I just signed up for LaLa.com after reading about this news regarding Apple today, and I'm quite impressed!
An acquisition by Apple like this is interesting. From a technological standpoint, I doubt LaLa has anything Apple couldn't build on their own. But the music industry might be preventing Apple from signing new streaming contracts, so Apple might be end-running them to buy someone who has those long-term deals already sewn up.
Seriously, $31b is an embarrassing amount of cash for a company Apple's size, with no debt and high margins.
The pressure will be on soon for them to start paying a dividend, unless they can prove that they can exercise their balance sheet a bit more and drive higher growth.
It's not that they're not doing wonderfully - they are - but they're making so much profit and just letting it sit in the bank, that at some point they're going to need to return it to the shareholders as a dividend. Unless they've got better ideas of what to do with it.
I hope they have better ideas of what to do with it!
I'd like to see them do something more significant with all that cash they are sitting on.