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Yep, and its not just LCDs, these deals happen with many of their suppliers. Business-wise its often much better to do so than buy them outright, because you av
by npunt 10y ago
Yep, and its not just LCDs, these deals happen with many of their suppliers. Business-wise its often much better to do so than buy them outright, because you avoid the risk of owning the wrong tech in a fast-changing technology environment. Just finance or invest in some facilities that make the parts you need now, and leave the long term business risk to the suppliers.
Unless there's some groundbreaking tech that is a key differentiator for Apple (e.g. CPU/GPU), its better to NOT vertically integrate.
- tedd4u 10y agoBest-in-class or near best displays are supporting and necessary but not sufficient for Apple. So acquisition doesn't make sense. The money is to guarantee supply for their huge product volumes and also sometimes a competitive measure to lock up supply so competitors can't get at it. On the other hand, I would not expect Apple to farm out their software, OS, marketing, industrial design any time soon. Unlike the supporting value of LCDs these are all differentiators.