nbd... In a weekend CNBC interview, Apple CEO Tim Cook casually dropped this: "So we acquire a company on average, every two to three weeks." He went ahead and connected the mathematical dots for us — Apple has bought 20-25 companies since November by Cook's estimation. And only about 6 of them have been reported on.
With great cheddar comes great responsibility ... Apple is only required to announce acquisitions that have a material impact on its business. None of these smaller ones apparently have. But investors aren't worried about the price, since Apple boasts $225B in cash as of last quarter's finish — There's pressure to spend it on things that will grow the business, or return it to investors as dividends.
Apple's using acquisitions to play catch up... Its iPod and iTunes changed music, but Apple fell behind in streaming — So it bought Beats in 2014 ($3B) and Shazam in 2018 ($400M) to catch up. The latest buying spree of tiny companies looks like subtle moves to beef up Siri (she trails Alexa and Google Home in some digital assistant rankings). These 3 specific recent acquisitions sound like Siri-enhancers:
- Laserlike: Machine learning — Teach Siri to understand humans better
- Silk Labs: AI software — Improve Siri's brain
- PullString Voice applications — Improve Siri's hearing