Roger Fingas
Apple is now typically buying a company every two to three weeks, CEO Tim Cook said in an interview during Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholder meeting this weekend.
In the last six months alone Apple has snapped up 20 to 25 businesses, Cook told CNBC. These aren't usually announced, the executive explained, because they're often small firms and Apple is "primarily looking for talent and intellectual property."
After spending on projects like its $1 billion secondary campus in Austin the company looks for targets of opportunity, Cook continued.
"If we have money left over, we look to see what else we [can] do," he commented. "We acquire everything that we need that can fit and has a strategic purpose to it. And so we acquire a company on average, every two to three weeks."
Some recent small-scale takeovers include backend startup Stamplay and machine learning outfit Laserlike. Other areas of interest include augmented reality and Apple Music content.
Analysts and investors have sometimes pushed Apple to use its cash reserves — now topping $225.4 billion — to buy out large corporations, even rivals like Netflix or Tesla. It hasn't made any such purchase since 2014, when it spent $3 billion on buying Beats to lay the groundwork for Apple Music and future audio gear.
Its last major purchase was Texture, announced during SXSW 2018, for which it allegedly paid at least $485 million. That service formed the basis for Apple News+, which lets people read a collection of magazines and newspapers for a flat monthly fee.
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33 Comments
Looks like following old Microsoft route in doing these things.
If Apple is buying these companies in large part to acquire talent and staffing, I ask the question again that I've asked before: what the hell are those tens of thousands of employees at Apple doing? They don't produce that many products, most of the hardware updates are incremental, they still rely upon Intel for processors (although that might change in the future) and while their products are great in some respects, they're highly flawed in others. They abandoned servers and network devices. HomePod and AppleTV aren't exactly taking over the market. They've had big problems with keyboards. They seem to have abandoned their desire to produce a smart automobile. They haven't made any obvious movies into AI and robotics, which I have always thought would be the future of Apple 10-15 years from now. Siri still sucks. Each new OS update decreases prior compatibility and seems filled with more bugs. The long promised new MacPro still isn't here. And their products (IMO) are far too expensive.
Personally, I think Apple is making itself too large to manage effectively. On a much smaller scale, I've seen this before. I worked for a company that had over 100 developers working on an e-commerce project and little got accomplished. We got rid of the contractors and knocked the staff down to 22 and because 22 people could be easily managed, far more was accomplished.
Was the Beats acquisition really worth the $billions they paid? Apple couldn't have instead produced headphones that competed with Beats and knocked them out of the market with superior marketing for far less money? While Beats headphones are popular, it's not like they're actually any good. They probably could have bought Sennheiser for a fraction of the cost or Grado for pocket change.
I have to wonder that with the speed that Apple is acquiring these companies, how many of them are successfully integrated into Apple where Apple actually makes use of the tech. If they're buying them just to acquire patents as a protection against lawsuits, that's another matter.
With all of that cash and since Apple is emphasizing services because that's where the growth is, I also have to wonder if they shouldn't have attempted to buy 20th Century Fox (which went to Disney) or Warner (which went to AT&T).
Is it 20 or 25 companies? Can't be both numbers.Anyway, good to be proactive and buy companies at cheaper price which have important technology patents which can help Apple going forward.