Apple remains on a shopping spree: In the past six years, the iPhone group has taken over almost 100 companies, as Apple boss Tim Cook announced – that corresponds to a deal every three to four weeks. The focus is on “small innovative companies”, the acquisition of which should help to “advance products”, explained Cook to shareholders at the company’s shareholders’ meeting, which this time was held virtually. Apple is also “not afraid to consider takeovers of any size,” Cook said.
Small purchases
Apple’s company acquisitions in the past two years have been diverse: They ranged from an interest-based search engine to a weather service, various providers in the field of virtual reality and artificial intelligence, to the start-up Drive.ai, which specializes in autonomous driving. Most of the acquisitions are incorporated into existing products as functions – the data from the purchased weather service Dark Sky is now part of the weather app on iPhones.
Many of the Apple acquisitions remain secret or are only noticed late. What they all have in common is that they are relatively small acquisitions; there are hardly any spectacular billion-dollar deals at Apple. The only major Apple acquisition in the last decade, priced at $ 3 billion, was Beats audio company – the foundation for Apple’s entry into the music streaming market.
No Netflix, no Tesla
What other big acquisitions Apple has seriously considered in recent years remains unclear. An analyst at the Wedbush investment firm recently said it was one of the company’s biggest strategic mistakes not to have taken over Netflix years ago – Apple is now lagging behind in video streaming and is likely to be forced to buy a film studio like MGM or Lionsgate to increase its small content offer more quickly. In the “darkest days of Model 3” he wanted to sell Tesla to Apple, Tesla boss Elon Musk recently said – but Cook has already refused to meet.
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