On-hand Cash of Apple, M$ and others...

[famousringo]

heruamon said:

famousringo said:

The main reason why Apple has the most cash is because they are very picky about how they spend it. In the past 10 years, Apple has made only 1/4 as many acquisitions as tech rivals Google, Microsoft and IBM. Apple also spends a similar fraction on R&D by maintaining a sharp focus on key products rather than trying to chase the competition into every market.

It keeps Apple nimble, and maintains the integrity of its corporate culture, because trying to integrate a new acquisition into your structure and strategy can be a tricky business.

A good example would be Microsoft's Danger acquisition. Microsoft spent an estimated $500 million on the company, and who knows how much additional money for two years of bad management before the team brought the Kin to market.

By comparison, Apple brought the original iPhone to market for an estimated $150 million dollars and the acquisition of a two-man touch gesture company called FingerWorks. Instead of buying a whole sandwich, Apple bought some secret sauce and built the rest from stuff it had in the fridge.

Might be also that M$ pays a hefty divisdend ever quarter, whereas Apples doesn't...you know...$1.1 bllion kinda adds up.

Right! I sometimes forget that some of these tech giants actually do pay dividends.

Well, take my spiel as describing that you're unlikely to see big, flashy acquisitions from Apple.

I think RIM is still too healthy to make a good acquisition target. They pretty much defeated WinMo in the business sector, and WinPho7 looks like MS retargeting their mobile strategy towards the consumer market right now. Also, RIM has a 'whole widget' smartphone model that doesn't really mesh very well with MS's software license model. MS would either have to cast aside RIM's hardware side or risk alienating their hardware partners, and that's after already gutting RIM's software to be replaced with WinPho.

Do you think MS might be better off buying a phone hardware company? HTC perhaps?