Could Apple, with $51 billion burning a hole in Cupertino’s pocket, turn its acquisitive eye toward consumer electronics pioneer Sony? That’s the question getting attention today as rumor of potential purchases by the iPhone maker push Sony stock higher. Like many rumors, the Sony buyout chatter has vaporous origins.
Although analysts appear skeptical as to how friendly such a takeover would be, just the potential of a buyout had Sony’s stock climbing 3 percent. Also fueling the rumor were comments by former Apple CEO John Scully. Scully, talking with reporters, said Steve Jobs always envisioned Sony as Apple’s goal.
“I remember (Sony co-founder) Akio Morita gave us one of hte first Sony Walkmans,” Sculley told Bloomberg. “None of us had ever seen anything like that before, because there had never been a product like that. This was 25 years ago and Steve was fascinated by it. The first thing he did was take it apart, and he looked at every single part. How the fit and finish was done, how it was built,” Scully said.
Jobs may also have spurred talk of future acquisitions when he announced the company’s quarterly earnings last week. Talking to analysts, Jobs said he saw “one or more” deals in the future. The comment was used to spin speculation that Apple could acquire Sony, or Adobe, or even Disney, where Jobs is the largest shareholder.
This isn’t the first rumor of a potential high-profile acquisition by Apple. Earlier this month, talk that the company might buy social networking giant Facebook erupted following a dinner between Jobs and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.
Apple has used its vast cash reserves in the past to acquire strategic companies, among them Quattro Wireless (which helped create the iAds mobile advertising platform), Lala (which helps Apple’s streaming media goals), and chipmaker Intrinsity. The Cupertino, Calif. company has also acquired Placebase and Poly9, two digital mapping companies that could help Apple free itself from reliance on Google for mapping.
[via AppleInsider, Barron’s]
