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I feel like the strategy forward for AAPL is to move to acquire a big name. I hear a few retail investors talking about apple acquiring Netflix. I believe that

I feel like the strategy forward for AAPL is to move to acquire a big name. I hear a few retail investors talking about apple acquiring Netflix. I believe that this is an acquisition that makes sense, and that it would complement nicely their other content distribution revenue streams.

gigatexal 9y ago
Yeah buying Netflix over Tesla* makes more sense. (I know you didn't mention Tesla but Apple has car ambitions it seems.) Netflix has a lot of debt but the chops to make really good content. No brainier there I think. They should have bought Waze, too. And Here maps to make their maps a ton better. And they should invest more into making their macbooks better imo, but they keep selling more and more year over year so they likely won't. I wish they would buy a smaller telco like sprint or tmobile, hell buy both, invest 100B into getting the cell coverage up and then move then incentivise people to move to the Apple telco plan. * Telsa's cash burn would likely scare investors. /end arm chair CEO'ing
- MBCook 9y ago
  I don’t think they could buy a cell phone company. As much as Apple likes vertical integration that would immediately piss off all the other cell phone companies and they have a much harder time selling things. And that’s assuming that the Justice Department would even let them. Netflix makes plenty of sense, I’d be happy with that. I doubt they’d ever by Tesla, but if anyone could sort out the production issues they were having I imagine Tim Cook and his team would be quite good at it.
  - gigatexal 9y ago
    I dunno. If they could buy a telco and then be the first to buy their way to 5G and make it an iPhone exclusive on their network that’s be pretty cool. Not worth the money though once the other carriers get 5G
    - MBCook 9y ago
      So they have to buy someone. WAY too hard and expensive to start from scratch. Let’s say they buy T-Mobile. What are Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T going to do? If you’re Apple do you think they’re going to be willing to do lots of promotion with you? You’re now a direct competitor. Maybe they’ll take you out of their stores. Maybe they’ll raise the price. Maybe they’ll just push other phones REALLY hard. Your sales are going to go down no matter what. It’s nice you on the whole network, but now you have to support all these other phones. Do you think Apple Mobile wants to be in the business of selling in supporting Android phones? Maybe they kicked everyone off, maybe they just try and encourage people to move over to the Apple side of the fence. Either way you’re losing customers. Your sales are down. Your customer count in mobile is down. The carriers are as mad at you or worse than they were when you first came around and suddenly had a lot of power. Your network isn’t good enough so the people who do stick with you or move to you aren’t going to have a great time because you simply don’t have a really big network. It’s going to take A LOT of time and money to fix that. You have money, but will people be willing to wait around? If Apple wanted to do this they would’ve had to do it years ago when the iPhone with still relatively new. And again, I don’t see the DOJ ever letting Apple do this. Ignoring questions of political goodwill towards Apple (which is VERY short), it would be a giant shake up of the mobile market. Let’s say it works. Let’s say they’re allowed to actually buy T-Mobile. Now what? Is Google going to try and buy a carrier? We already know that Comcast wants to be in the cell phone game, are they going to try and buy a cell phone maker? The stupidly large companies that shouldn’t be getting larger by taking over other industries problem will just continue. I really like Apple. I do not want this to happen. And for the reasons above I don’t think they will do it.
      - amartya916 9y ago
        I completely agree. For a while I was wondering whether an MVNO operator like Virgin Mobile (piggybacking on Sprint) that exclusively works with iPhones (a fairly recent change) was a stealth move by Apple to test the waters. As you rightly pointed out, it just doesn't make sense for Apple, and in the broader sense, the bigger these companies get, the worse it is for consumer choice.
  - ianamartin 9y ago
    Apple has already pissed off every telco there is by refusing to let them put their branding on the iPhone. Don't pretend these people are playing nice. Telcos hate Apple, and Apple doesn't care. You either get to sell the iPhone or you don't. And the DOJ doesn't give a rat's ass about any company with ~20% of the market. Unless it's e-books and Apple involved. In which case they do.
    - MBCook 9y ago
      Apple does not have friends in the government thanks to the whole thing a year or two ago about unlocking an iPhone. The DOJ’s current thoughts on antitrust seem to be “anything that might lower prices is good“. Apple certainly didn’t have a big chunk of the e-book market but it still got in trouble anyway. The phone companies HAVE to put up with Apple because the phones sell too well. They tried hardball years ago and it didn’t work. Then they tried promoting competitors and it didn’t work. I think android being big was a foregone conclusion, but the promotion of things like the Droid didn’t push Apple to a marginal player like they wanted. Frankly I think the current administration would be happy to put up a fight against Apple just put up a fight against Apple. I don’t think they should be allowed to become a phone company anyway, although I’m sure that wouldn’t be the real reason for the suit. Realistically I think the shareholders would slaughter them due to the risk that the cash cow that is the iPhone would be injured in any way.
      - ianamartin 9y ago
        I'm not sure how anything you've said disagrees with anything I've said.
    - gigatexal 9y ago
      Good. Let them piss the telco's off. Nobody wants branded shit on their phone. it's one of the reasons their laptops are so nice -- great build quality (even still, keyboard aside) and no damn stickers or crap software pre-installed.
- sumedh 9y ago
  I dont think Elon is the kind of guy who would give up control.

gigatexal 9y ago

Yeah buying Netflix over Tesla* makes more sense. (I know you didn't mention Tesla but Apple has car ambitions it seems.) Netflix has a lot of debt but the chops to make really good content. No brainier there I think. They should have bought Waze, too. And Here maps to make their maps a ton better. And they should invest more into making their macbooks better imo, but they keep selling more and more year over year so they likely won't. I wish they would buy a smaller telco like sprint or tmobile, hell buy both, invest 100B into getting the cell coverage up and then move then incentivise people to move to the Apple telco plan. * Telsa's cash burn would likely scare investors. /end arm chair CEO'ing

MBCook 9y ago
I don’t think they could buy a cell phone company. As much as Apple likes vertical integration that would immediately piss off all the other cell phone companies and they have a much harder time selling things. And that’s assuming that the Justice Department would even let them. Netflix makes plenty of sense, I’d be happy with that. I doubt they’d ever by Tesla, but if anyone could sort out the production issues they were having I imagine Tim Cook and his team would be quite good at it.
- gigatexal 9y ago
  I dunno. If they could buy a telco and then be the first to buy their way to 5G and make it an iPhone exclusive on their network that’s be pretty cool. Not worth the money though once the other carriers get 5G
  - MBCook 9y ago
    So they have to buy someone. WAY too hard and expensive to start from scratch. Let’s say they buy T-Mobile. What are Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T going to do? If you’re Apple do you think they’re going to be willing to do lots of promotion with you? You’re now a direct competitor. Maybe they’ll take you out of their stores. Maybe they’ll raise the price. Maybe they’ll just push other phones REALLY hard. Your sales are going to go down no matter what. It’s nice you on the whole network, but now you have to support all these other phones. Do you think Apple Mobile wants to be in the business of selling in supporting Android phones? Maybe they kicked everyone off, maybe they just try and encourage people to move over to the Apple side of the fence. Either way you’re losing customers. Your sales are down. Your customer count in mobile is down. The carriers are as mad at you or worse than they were when you first came around and suddenly had a lot of power. Your network isn’t good enough so the people who do stick with you or move to you aren’t going to have a great time because you simply don’t have a really big network. It’s going to take A LOT of time and money to fix that. You have money, but will people be willing to wait around? If Apple wanted to do this they would’ve had to do it years ago when the iPhone with still relatively new. And again, I don’t see the DOJ ever letting Apple do this. Ignoring questions of political goodwill towards Apple (which is VERY short), it would be a giant shake up of the mobile market. Let’s say it works. Let’s say they’re allowed to actually buy T-Mobile. Now what? Is Google going to try and buy a carrier? We already know that Comcast wants to be in the cell phone game, are they going to try and buy a cell phone maker? The stupidly large companies that shouldn’t be getting larger by taking over other industries problem will just continue. I really like Apple. I do not want this to happen. And for the reasons above I don’t think they will do it.
    - amartya916 9y ago
      I completely agree. For a while I was wondering whether an MVNO operator like Virgin Mobile (piggybacking on Sprint) that exclusively works with iPhones (a fairly recent change) was a stealth move by Apple to test the waters. As you rightly pointed out, it just doesn't make sense for Apple, and in the broader sense, the bigger these companies get, the worse it is for consumer choice.
- ianamartin 9y ago
  Apple has already pissed off every telco there is by refusing to let them put their branding on the iPhone. Don't pretend these people are playing nice. Telcos hate Apple, and Apple doesn't care. You either get to sell the iPhone or you don't. And the DOJ doesn't give a rat's ass about any company with ~20% of the market. Unless it's e-books and Apple involved. In which case they do.
  - MBCook 9y ago
    Apple does not have friends in the government thanks to the whole thing a year or two ago about unlocking an iPhone. The DOJ’s current thoughts on antitrust seem to be “anything that might lower prices is good“. Apple certainly didn’t have a big chunk of the e-book market but it still got in trouble anyway. The phone companies HAVE to put up with Apple because the phones sell too well. They tried hardball years ago and it didn’t work. Then they tried promoting competitors and it didn’t work. I think android being big was a foregone conclusion, but the promotion of things like the Droid didn’t push Apple to a marginal player like they wanted. Frankly I think the current administration would be happy to put up a fight against Apple just put up a fight against Apple. I don’t think they should be allowed to become a phone company anyway, although I’m sure that wouldn’t be the real reason for the suit. Realistically I think the shareholders would slaughter them due to the risk that the cash cow that is the iPhone would be injured in any way.
    - ianamartin 9y ago
      I'm not sure how anything you've said disagrees with anything I've said.
  - gigatexal 9y ago
    Good. Let them piss the telco's off. Nobody wants branded shit on their phone. it's one of the reasons their laptops are so nice -- great build quality (even still, keyboard aside) and no damn stickers or crap software pre-installed.
sumedh 9y ago
I dont think Elon is the kind of guy who would give up control.