What is/should Apple doing with all that cash?

[B1gMac]

Apple now has nearly $40 billion in the bank (cash+short term investments). That's a lot more than any other comparably sized company, as well as most larger ones. Maybe somebody with a little more knowledge about finance could educate me as to why this is a good strategy?

The most likely scenario IMO, is that they're saving up to buy another huge company. So, who do you think they want to buy?

 

[maflynn]

They've been sitting on a ton of cash for years. They've been fairly smart in their take-overs. They pick and choose small companies that have technology that they can then easily incorporate it into their products.

Personally, the folks that make those decisions are much smarter then I am, at least smarter on what to buy or not buy so I have no idea.

Though I do think them buying adobe would make sense from a software perspective. I'm not sure if the corporate cultures are similar enough that they would be able to assimilate adobe into apple. Just look at how HP and compaq merged. It was probably a huge mistake on HP's part. Just because you can buy a company doesn't mean you should.

 

[9822737]

Though I do think them buying adobe would make sense from a software perspective.

Flash on the iPhone finally!

LOL

 

[MorphingDragon]

Hire 100 Objective-C/Cocoa, OpenAL/CL/GL and C++ devs. Go hardcore on Snowleopard, get it stable. Then start making 10.7 take advantage of their own technology. Hire Netkas, Get an EFi Rom made for the entire HD5XXX series.

I swear the FOSS world is more proactive than Apple.

If an average coder got about $75-100,000 each that wouldn't be more than 1Bill.

 

[belvdr]

Just look at how HP and compaq merged. It was probably a huge mistake on HP's part. Just because you can buy a company doesn't mean you should.

I think the merger process was terrible, but HP gained the ProLiant line of servers, which are very superior to the old HP NetServer line.

I wonder where HP would be today without ProLiant.

 

[MisterMe]

...

Though I do think them buying adobe would make sense from a software perspective. I'm not sure if the corporate cultures are similar enough that they would be able to assimilate adobe into apple. Just look at how HP and compaq merged. It was probably a huge mistake on HP's part. Just because you can buy a company doesn't mean you should.

The HP takeover of Compaq does little to inform us about the implications of an Apple takeover of Adobe. The latter was a consolidation of two areas of the computer market--PC clones and midrange computers. The midrange was a viable but declining market. The PC clone market was barely profitable if profitable at all.

Apple and Adobe are an entirely different matter. Apple is a very profitable company owing to its innovative and popular new products. Adobe is profitable, but does not deserve to be owing to its mercurial management. Adobe has some essential legacy products--PostScript, its type library, Acrobat. Its graphics software line is the standard of the industry. Then there is Flash. It also has products that are no longer in development that many people relied on--FrameMaker for the Mac, PageMaker, etc.

The reason that we have TrueType is because Adobe refused Apple's request to make Type 1 friendlier to laserprinters. Adobe went on to lose the Type Wars. It climbed into bed with Microsoft for OpenType. It appears to have conceded the printer engine battle for low-end printers. Its software products are for the most part expensive and copy-protected.

With Apple in charge, I can imagine object-oriented PostScript and PDF. A resolution of the abandonment of FrameMaker on the Mac. Flash that does not suck. A renaissance of advancement in type development. And so much more. An end to Adobe thumbing the eyes of Mac users.

My only concern is for the possible antitrust implications of such a move. However, I believe that Apple can pull it off. The World will be a better place if it can.

 

[*LTD*]

Buy Pixelmator.

 

[mrkjsn]

Buy Dell and give all the Dell investors back their money.

 

[B1gMac]

Assuming a relatively safe 5% return on investment each year (in bonds or cds), Apple could safely spend about 2 billion per year without eating into the cash endowment. With 2 billion dollars per year guaranteed, they could basically afford to hire 20,000 Computer Science and Computer Engineering PHDs (making an average of 100k/year).

Who cares if they don't fit in to Apple's corporate style? Just isolate them and pick off the good ideas they come up with.

Plus, we're not even talking about the fact that they continue to make *more* money, all of which only adds to the 40 billion dollar pile!

 

[ComicStix]

I don't think they will be able to take over Adobe. That would give them too powerful and the point of mercantilism is free market unless one company is gobbling up others, right? Then they might reject windows from making their products compatible and rip flash away from them! AHH Not laissez-fairre!

 

[lionheartednyhc]

Create a useful (& full featured) tablet.