I tend to think that buying any of the big silicon fab companies would probably be in Apple's interests. They generate the kind of cash you need to be able to i

I tend to think that buying any of the big silicon fab companies would probably be in Apple's interests. They generate the kind of cash you need to be able to invest in the huge R&D costs needed to sustain Moore's Law, and they have clearly indicated that they want to keep their iOS SoCs at or very close to the leading edge of process technology, because it gives them a huge competitive advantage. However, the problem there is that it means you really need to be buying Intel, TSMC or Samsung. Clearly Samsung is a non-starter, and TSMC seems to be fiercely independent, leaving Intel. I can't imagine a healthy world where Apple has bought Intel, so that seems to also not be an option (I can well imagine that regulatory authorities might want to block anyone from buying Intel). Maybe they could use their piles of cash to build their own fabbing capabilities from the ground up, but that seems like it would be a very risky and very drawn out task. So, yeah, not sure there isn't anyone worth buying, but they may not be able to actually buy the companies that would help them pull further ahead in owning their core technologies.