Ever since Apple’s Q4 ‘08 financial report was given, there has been a lot of buzz about Apple’s cash on hand. Apple’s stockpile of 24.5 billion dollars certainly sets them apart from many other publicly owned companies.

With the economic downfall as of late, some say they should just hold on to it to help them sustain themselves during these poor times. Although the stock itself is way down compared to it’s 52-week high (who’s stock isn’t!), I for one don’t believe that they are going to have a need to do this.

All of the indicating factors seem to point to Apple doing quite well in middle of all this recession talk. “Black Friday” was huge in both the brick & mortar stores as well as the online Apple Store. Come “Cyber-Monday”, Apple was the #5 online destination according to many sources.

The time is ripe for bargain basement acquisitions during this recession for those that have the moola which Apple does. I’ve read many speculations as to different start-ups and existing businesses that some say Apple is either looking at or should be. Quite frankly, I can’t buy into any of these rumors or speculations. They just don’t make sense to me.

Here’s my idea on an acquisition that I believe does make sense. Adobe Systems! A market cap of just under 12 billion. Certainly within Apple’s range. They are a sustained and profitable company.

Woa!!! Why would they want to do that? Well, I think there are several valid opportunities and reasons for this. Who owns the desktop publishing industry on hardware? Apple. Who owns the desktop publishing industry in software? Adobe. What has the desktop publishing industry melded into? Media publishing.

In the Pro software arena, what are Apple’s offerings? Video editing: Final Cut Studio, Audio editing: Logic Studio, Image editing (workflow): Aperture. Adobe competes head to head in the video editing and the image editing. In addition, they have Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Acrobat and InDesign.

In one fail swoop, Apple could own all of this while eliminating it’s biggest software competitor on two fronts. In addition, they would now own arguably much of the best pro grade software that is made for both Macintosh and Windows. I’d be willing to bet we’d see flash on the iPhone real quick if this happened.

-Mike-N-Tosh™

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 13th, 2008 at 7:48 pm and is filed under Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.