Apple's cash reserve charted, admired
Silicon Alley Insider charts Apple's cash hoard today. It is interesting to note that Apple was paying off a lot of debt in the earlier parts of the chart. Also, Apple's cash reserves really started to skyrocket when they set the iPhone loose. Apple can already buy a company the size of Dell with their cash and short term investments. What are they saving all of this money for?
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- Sounds like hell to me. One
12 min 32 sec ago - This is going to hurt:
99¢ is
31 min 25 sec ago - what is source?
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1 hour 1 min ago - so, since what century are
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Comments (26)
What are they saving the money for....
Retirement? Vacation? Moon base? They're going to buy Microsoft and rebrand Windows "iVista" just to piss off the people who hate the i prefix? Or maybe it's just insurance.
Let's go with Moon base. Awesome.
bravoo! keep it up guys!
I mean...
Its gone beyond saving up in case of a worst case scenario.
Its gone beyond funding a Tablet.
Its gone beyond buying a smaller company.
Its gone beyond a stock buy back or dividend (which wouldn't happen anyway).
So what exactly is AAPL doing with this cash? I'd like to hear some legitimate ideas from the comment board.
Death Star. They're building a Death Star.
Easy! Apple is saving up to buy Microsoft :¬)
How about a dividend?!
exactly what I was going to say
to buy microsoft and win the os-war! ;>
TAKE A LOOK AT THAT GRAPH WINDOWZ MAGGOTS and realize why the hell we are fanboys ! Read and weep !!!!!!!
Hi-tech automated robot-populated manufacturing plant (next to a hydroelectric power station).
iNasa?
Shouldn't that read "cash hoard"?
Not my idea, but hopefully they will build a huge wind and solar powered facility in the desert, cooled by geothermal energy. They'll actually start building their products in the USA again, rather than in China. They will employ tens of thousands of workers. They will become a truly green company, building this greenest of green plants in their biggest market, rather than shipping products by plane or boat from Asia.
C'mon, Steve, it's time to Think Different.
I think if Apple did this, they would automate as much as possible and employ as few people as necessary, as per this article from Seth:
http://blogs.computerworld.com/apple_brick_is_a_manufacturing_process
Great idea and lots of reasons to do it.
I like the concept, but these things haven't happened yet for a reason.
The problem with wind and solar in the desert is that few people live and work in inhospitable places, and the power used for desert heating, cooling and transportation can be tremendous.
OK, you say, just move the power to the city!
Well, sadly, the transfer of electricity is far from 100% efficient. That's why it's much more efficient to have your generation facilities close to your population.... the losses in a long-distance grid can easily run over 20%. And building out a hundred miles of high tension grid can easily cost several billion alone.
The best strategy is to lower consumption:
Cable and satellite services suck big time. You pay for and support channels you don't want. Many channels are subjects you don't want to support. Why do I pay dearly to see commercials, sometimes as long as the program itself? Recording is a pain - having to plan and when recorded you have to fast forward arouond commercials. Downloaded content means you are required to wait for content. Pay for 200+ channels and only use 15-25? Movies rerun for months or years? Locals not high definition? Pay to record what you already paid to receive?
There is a giant hole available for someone who can deliver good content, ad free (or very limited), high definition, fast, reliable, and most of all, what you want when you want to see it.
The network. Perhaps Verizon... FTH and extensive modern wireless network. But it looks like Google might beat them to it.
The network of course. Perhaps Verizon... FTH and extensive modern wireless network. But Google might beat them to it.
As a stockholder I think it's time for a dividend. Microsoft eventually got to the point they had more cash than they could sit on and returned some of it to stockholders as a dividend. I think it's time for Apple to do the same.
Verison does not have any hold on cell phone service provision. Just false adverising. AT&T has as good network as Verison. Their extended edge is almost as good as Verison 3g. I was on Verison before changing and I have very good service. I have never been sorry, but of course, I am in the land of Oz (Ks). Sprint is going to be bought out, just a matter of time. They are losing ground big time. Probably not apple, but, might be interesting if they did. But Sprint sold their towers (at least many of them) for operating capital. Now they rent tower space.
What I want is a service that allows me to chose what I want to see and by making that choice, the maker of the piece of content I select gets the financial reward. This way, it is based on the quality and selection of their content.
Internet is too slow and is too expensive to provide content to all of us, the only other resonable way today is a combination of internet and satellite. Fibre optics are good, but still will have limits and it will be a long time before the majority of households get it.
Whatever happens, has to be done right, like, a monthly fee which covers x amount of content. Example: $30 a month for 20 hours of whatever . Want more, pay more.
Paying off their debt was crutial and has already happened. That would allow them to survive a downturn in the economy even if sales were down.
And dividend payment is usually reserved for companies that see their long-term growth slowing -- not the case with Apple at all. However part of that money should be returned to the shareholdes, which will actually increase the value of the stock and even further boost their cash and equity holdings.
Clearly the amount of money excedes the funds they need for research, or marketing, or opening new retail stores.
So the best thing to do with the money is to use it to leverage a gain in market share. This is done by strategically lowering prices and/or offering a better value to their customers. Apple has been doing both in text book fashion. They have all but killed off Palm. It has been so successful for them that their increase spending has been more than made up by increased margin. So they wind up with even more money in the bank at the end of the day.
But they have been smart in doing very little with the money. Remember you can only spend it once, and once its gone, its hard to get it back.
I wonder how many years they could give away MacBooks for free before they burned thru all their cash? (;>
They should buy Adobe and kill Flash.
ISatelite, a la the late Iridium project....
iSatellite, a la the late Iridium project....
Ummm... you might want to look at the size of Microsoft and read a little more about what it graph would look like before making such a stupid comment.
Maybe Steve's going to Buy Dell, close it down and give the money back to the shareholders ;-)