An article was published by the BBC a few days ago pertaining to Apple's long term plans. Apparently the company, which is now valued at half a trillion US dollars, is planning on spending as much as half of its annual profits in a long-term strategy they unveiled during the week.
The whole article can be found here, but I want to highlight a few things that caught my interest. For starters, the rhetoric used by the executives of the company points to a rather offensive stance in the electronics market unseen for quite some time. With terms such as "war chest" and "building out our infrastructure," it sounds like they're fortifying a small country as opposed to simply expanding a corporation.
Next, the fact that they are buying back stock while initiating a dividend screams to me that they are trying to inflate the stock itself. The prospect of a dividend will drastically increase the demand for stock in the company; meanwhile the buyback of stock will decrease the overall amount of stock available to the public. Through combination of these factors, the price of shares in Apple Inc. could skyrocket, from $600 a share today, to nearly $900 in the coming years or even months.
Then there's talk of acquisitions and strategic prepayments. Before we get into that, we have to bear in mind that Apple already has a record of legal attacks on other companies, such as those who helped the Android market become Apple's main competition. And let's not forget how Microsoft and Apple have fought in the legal sector for years now.
If Apple manages to get a grip on the smaller entities surrounding Google's Android OS, they could potentially weaken it and pull much farther ahead than they are now. After all, if you remove a castle's foundation, it will sink under its own weight, or so they say.
But what does this all amount to? At this point, Apple Inc. could buy their own country if they so wished. Their GDP does, after all, exceed that of third world countries. Of course, it would be pointless to do so unless said territory contained some vital resource to power Apple's technological empire. That's all mere speculation bordering on fictional ideals.
Still, one thing bothers me. Educational grants by the US government have allowed for the purchase of iPads and Mac computers, yet I have yet to hear about Apple contracting with the military or with the health care initiative under President Obama. The military has been known to use unorthodox hardware in the past,
such as the purchase of 2200 PS3s back in 2009.It would make perfect sense for the government to purchase iPads for mobile operations due to their light weight and durability in the field. It would also make sense for every hospital to use iPads as the "Clipboard of the Future;" in fact, it's been discussed by students at my university. You see, Oregon Institute of Technology is a medical school in addition to being a technical school; and a partnership exists between the university and Sky Lakes Medical Center, which is conveniently located across from the campus. But that's neither here nor there.
The point is, if Apple were to contract with the US government, or any other government, to distribute tablet computers throughout the respective military and medical facilities, then Apple would be set to acquire billions, if not trillions, of dollars. The amount of money and influence the corporation would then have is indescribable. Of this I have no doubt.
Still, we won't know Apple's true motive until they start to act, and it will not be long now. What do you guys think? Please feel free to share your thoughts on the matter. It is important we keep an eye on this corporation, because what they decide to do could impact technology worldwide, and those changes could even impact us as a community (such as how we exchange information, communicate or even how we accomplish missions).
