|
$19 Billion and nothing to spend it on |
|
Written by Chris Tangora
|
|
Monday, 05 May 2008 |
 Apple has approximately $19 Billion dollars in cash reserves right now, and is accumulating more and more. The question that Wall Street and lots of other people have is, "where is it going?" What will Apple buy or do with that much money? The even crazier part is that Apple is approaching Microsoft levels of "cash in hand".
Microsoft has approximately $26 billion in cash, Apple has approximately $19 billion. But here's the interesting part. Back in November of 2007 Apple had $15.4 billion. So Apple has managed to store away 4 billion in the last 6 months or so. Microsoft, however, is having the opposite effect. Before they pulled their Yahoo bid they were about ready to borrow money for the first time (Their cash in hand went from $64 billion four years ago to the current $26 billion).
People are speculating that Apple will buy some bandwaves from NextWave, hold out for a major merger, or continue to invest in it's people through economic hard times ( what Steve said they would do ). Either way, expect Apple to have well over $20 billion by the end of the year, if not over $25 billion. But competition for companies will heat up soon, Intel has announced that they are going to be doing active acquisitions in the upcoming year. How will that play out if Intel and Apple are both interested in the same company?
Apple reaching Microsoft's cash supply level (from 9 to 5 mac)
NextWave offeres up bandwidth for sale (from eweek via 9to5mac comments)
Intel announces acquistion interest (from FT.com)
|
