Maybe Apple should merge with Handspring or Palm, and use the strong cash flow and cash on hand to invest in new platforms and new revenue streams.
The problem with that logic is that Apple's problem has nothing to do with insufficient cash on hand. Apple is swimming in cash. Almost all of the value of a share of Apple stock is its cash hoard. So I don't really see the point of a merger, unless it is to acquire strategic technologies.
My point was the opposite of what you took it to be. Apple's problem is that it has too much cash, and not enough high-return projects to invest it in. They have a terrible track record projects beyond the box. The point of a merger would be to take the resources of Apple and put it behind a company with high-return projects to invest it in. Use Apple as a cash-flow engine.
What Apple needs to do is to stop hoarding its cash, and to develop and release good products regularly. Whether those products are hardware or software, consumer or enterprise, electronic or stuffed-animal, is immaterial. They just have to invest in their own R&D and corporate development rather than sitting on cash.
Once again, Apple R&D just doesn't have the track record for this type of work beyond the Mac.
By the way, the word on the street is that they just offered all of their Select and Premiere developers up to five hardware purchases at discount prices. My hunch is that they plan to release something tasty at MacWorld, and they have to try to get rid of these old models now because nobody will want them after MacWorld. This would be a nice change from the present arrangement, where for months their best-selling machine has been the discontinued 400 MHz G4 model.
Well, inventory build up is the cause of the current problem. This seems like just one example of their attempts to unload it before the end of the quarter. The key is they want to make this quarter as bad as possible at this point, and leave next quarter with a clean slate. |
