Apple presented its quarterly earnings last night. In the process, the word acquisitions came up. But what exactly does the company want?
Apple’s financial numbers are of course interesting, but during their presentation Tim Cook made a remarkable statement. The company’s top executive talked about acquisitions.
Apple regularly makes acquisitions, but often they are not too big. Yet Cook now lets it be known that he is not ruling it out. Still, those companies don’t have to be big giants, as he says he wants IP and talent for all of them. “We won’t leave out something bigger if the opportunity arises. I’m not going to go through the list with you during this talk, but we’re always looking,” the top executive tells the audience.
Apple and acquisitions
The list of Apple acquisitions is now incredibly long. What is striking is that it is mainly smaller companies and start-ups that develop certain techniques which Apple can then apply in its soft- and hardware. Last year BBC calculated that Apple makes an acquisition every three to four weeks.
The best known and largest acquisition dates back to 2014. That’s when Apple acquired headphone manufacturer and streaming service Beats. It also had a major acquisition in 2019. That’s when the manufacturer took over the majority of Intel’s smartphone modem business. This involved about 1 billion. This gave the iPhone maker a good number of wireless technologies.
There is also plenty of speculation in the media about new acquisitions. One of the main candidates would be fitness company Peloton. This should mainly benefit the Apple Watch and Apple Fitness+. The latter service the company offers in a number of countries. It provides fitness classes and instructional videos for workouts. So such an acquisition is actually the same thing the company did with Beats. It got its hands on new devices and was able to improve Apple Music at the same time.
The new features of Fitness+ (Image: Apple)
Streaming
Another branch that is mentioned a lot is the streaming branch. The iPhone maker is working hard to expand Apple TV+. The service achieved considerable success last year, winning an Oscar for best film and stringing together Ted Lasso’s Emmy Awards.
Apple was mentioned to take over MGM, but in the end Amazon Prime Video ran away with it by putting down 8.45 billion. Hello Sunshine also sang around but Reese Withersoon’s production company eventually went to Blackstone. The name A24 still sings around but there is nothing to suggest that it will actually happen.
Probably the acquisitions of various smaller companies with certain techniques will continue. What the next big hit will be remains to be seen.
