Apple might acquire Sony?(reuters.com) |
Apple might acquire Sony?(reuters.com) |
…and they made $17.6B profit last year.
Apple makes the MacBook Pro, MacBook, MacBook Air, Mac Pro, iMac, Mac Mini, iPad, iPhone, iPod Classic, iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle, and iPod Touch along with some peripherals…
…and they made $17.2B profit last year. And some would claim that Apple has let the SKU list get out of hand over the past few years…there's probably some fat trimming in the company's future...
Two completely different corporate philosophies. Chance of merger: 0%.
It would also put Apple/Sony at odds with all the other media companies, they would lose support.
Let's not forget that it's internally divided - so many horrible compromises were wrought by Sony because its IP division (movies, music) was pissed off by technical advances made by its tech division (hardware).
Sony has also tried and failed time & time again to make its own proprietary formats win -- Betamax, MiniDisc, Memory Stick, etc. -- showing that it is more invested in "being right than being effective." Apple has won by taking risks on standards -- even when it was doing DRM, used existing standards.
Sony is, if anything, the Anti-Apple.
We should start a betting pool for what companies Apple will buy. Oh wait, such a pool already exists and is called the stock market...
Not to imply that I think it's likely, but Sony DOES have something that Apple might benefit from: manufacturing. Don't forget, Sony makes quite a few semiconductor products -- including, for example, the sensors in Nikon's digital SLRs.
Overall though, I agree with the prevailing opinion, that it's pretty unlikely.
Make money when the rumor pops and short.
They also make nice iPod competitors.
Of course, there's no reason why Apple would buy such a huge company. They prefer to buy small tech companies that they can absorb without losing their design and management DNA. Not big competitors. Not $33 billion companies with 163,000 employees.
But there are many companies which could be fixed by a CEO such as Jobs. What brick would Sony bring to Apple's offer that makes sense to buy rather than make?
* brand recognition? Sony's isn't too bad, but it's leagues away from Apple's.
* a bunch of Wintel PC with nice-looking casings? Come on!
* a bunch of almost adequate MP3 players? LOL.
* rights on their music and movies portfolio? This sounds much better, but I doubt they would buy the whole Sony-the-consumer-appliances-maker to get Sony-the-music-major.
I fail to see what would make Sony valuable specifically to Apple.
The Blu-Ray format sums up what is wrong with Sony. It's a dead end format which probably won't even recoup the money it took to develop.
Blue-ray? Apple thinks optical media is dead.
Playstation? Apple has it's own gaming devices: Mac, iPhone/iPod, Apple TV (if they add an App Store).
TVs? Apple can build it's own TV hardware, they don't need Sony.
Talent? Takeovers of this scale are very hard. Apple probably has a very different culture than Sony. Apple could get key talent significantly cheaper than acquiring the whole company.
Components? Same as talent and licensing is probably much less trouble and cheaper.
Music/Movies? Creating content is not what Apple is about. Apple creates tools for content creators and content consumers.
B2B? Apple/Steve is mostly interested in the consumer market.
The article also mentions Disney as a target. I thought Steve is the or one of the biggest single shareholders of Disney. Jobs is also on the Disney board, so he already has influence on Disney, without spending huge amounts of Apples cash.
The only way they'd do it is to make some sort of integrated TV/AppleTV thing. But I'm not sure that's really to their advantage versus just selling an AppleTV and letting folks plug it into their existing TVs.
Such a merger will never happen and if it does it will be a dangerous move for both. People never think about cultural match when discussing mergers.
I rather doubt the rumours though. There would be many business units that would have to be spun out or shut down. (Sony Ericsson, Sony eReaders, BluRay, etc)
I like Sony. I like Apple. I'd like to see Sony find its way again and start competing hard and innovating.
Not sure how this would help either company. Apple doesn't need any help getting really great hardware made. If anything, Sony would bring the quality down considerably.
(written from my macbookpro in chrome)
Now I'm seeing Reuters keeping the story alive. Again, ridiculous.
I see fundamental differences between the two companies. What Apple gets by buying Sony is control over a brand that is instantly identifiable across the world (come to India to know what I mean). That might probably be of huge value to Apple, as Apple is definitely not seen as a 'people's brand' around here.
1) Prevent competition on the Mac app store 2) Proven distribution/scalability 3) Instant community that can bolster Ping
Edited. Brainfart, put "Sony" there
If they did buy them, I don't think it'd be for a merger of any kind. But I'm certainly no expert at these sorts of things. I've been wrong before!
If Apple did buy Sony, the PS4 would have an awesome controller.
I have a hard time imagining even a close cooperation between the two. Apple always wants to control the entire value chain. Apple TV running on Sony TVs? Not likely.
I would actually believe an AMD acquisition before this.
Most of these merger rumors have supposed benefits that would be more easily and cheaply obtained through a licensing deal or other limited cooperation agreement.
As we keep that in mind and notice that Apple has converged into the consumer electronics space, which Sony had locked up back in the days of Walkman, Sony starts to make sense as a potential Apple interest. Perhaps Jobs feels that Sony infrastructure that he so admired is still lingering under the dust of wayward big-corporate management, caked on as Sony grew beyond good managerial capacity.
Apple is pretty big now and has been able to maintain that. Sony could go far in Jobs' hands.
and so on.
Here is a line for Apple: "Never underestimate the power of people's vanity."