3 ms·
about $97B
by booi 15y ago
about $97B
- feralchimp 15y agoTo give that number some scale, consider that in 1985, the annual budget of General Dynamics Electric Boat topped out at $400B.[1] Maybe they're saving up for an actual assault on Big Brother. [1] - http://www.gdeb.com/about/history/centennial/eb-100yrs-7.html http://www.gdeb.com/about/history/centennial/eb-100yrs-7.htm...
- aheilbut 15y agoTo be clear, ~$400B was the US defense budget, not that of General Dynamics.
- feralchimp 15y agoWow, thanks for the correction. Skimming FTL.
- evilduck 15y ago(I formerly worked for GDIT, so this also looked wonky to me) General Dynamics did a little under $32.5 billion in revenue last year, with $2.6 billion in profit. See: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2011/full_list/ http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2011/full_...
- redthrowaway 15y agoHoly crap. That's enough to buy a controlling share of AT&T, almost all of Verizon, Sony 5 times over, Viacom 3 times over... It's hard to imagine how they could spend that on facilities or R&D, and AAPL's not the kind of company to take a loss on something in order to corner the market like AMZN. I can't imagine what they would spend it on. Actually, speaking of Amazon, Apple could buy them easily, and still have enough money left over for Netflix. Thisw is, of course, idle speculation, but it does serve to highlight just how much they could throw their weight around, if they wanted to.
- latch 15y agoThe problem is that both Google and Microsoft have a lot of cash on hand as well. I always saw their reserves as more of a assured mutual destruction than actually being liquid. Anything that one really wants, the others can jack up the price to stupid levels (Nortel's patent). I think it hurts all three companies...like spending money on nuclear missiles that you'll never use rather than something els.e
- tallanvor 15y agoEach company has shown that they're willing to spend money to keep some companies away from the others. --Look at Microsoft's purchase of Skype (I'm still not sure why they really did that). The one thing that Microsoft does differently is they pay dividends, which is a very clear way of providing value to stockholders. Google has never done this, and Apple hasn't done this since 1995.
- mburns 15y agoMicrosoft bought Skype because they had an excess of European profits and, instead of taking the US tax hit by bringing that money local, they spent it in Europe, by buying Skype.
- easp 15y agoIf you want to think about how Apple could throw their weight around, consider the subtler options. Their moves with strategic suppliers might give a clue.