With one of the largest cash reserves in the industry, Apple buys one company every two to three weeks. In the last six months alone, 20-25 companies of various sizes have been bought, and Apple does not betray such deals much publicity. Only those assets are bought that can be useful in strategic terms.
CEO Tim Cook in a recent interview with the TV channel admitted that over the past six months, Apple has bought from 20 to 25 companies. As a rule, acquired companies cannot boast of large scale, and Apple makes such acquisitions for the sake of access to valuable personnel and intellectual property. For example, the Texture service bought last year, which provided access to paid publications from various publishers for a fixed subscription fee, later reborn as Apple News+. At the quarterly reporting conference, Tim Cook was asked if the company was hatching ideas for launching new services, and he answered in the affirmative, but added that he was not ready to go into details ahead of time.
The largest purchase in Apple's recent history can be considered the acquisition of Beats in 2014 for $ 3 billion. Headsets under this brand continue to be successfully sold by Apple, and the wearables division itself is one of the fastest growing. Cook explains that if a company has free money, it tries to acquire those assets that will organically merge into the overall corporate structure and will be strategically useful. He also noted at the quarterly conference that Apple is in a privileged position: it receives more money than it needs for production needs and development, so it regularly buys back shares and increases dividends to please shareholders.
At the end of last quarter, Apple declared $225,4 billion in free cash. This makes it one of the wealthiest corporations in the world. With such a budget, you can afford to make a new acquisition every two to three weeks, and at the same time not spend time advertising each transaction.
Source: 3dnews.ru