Michal Ždanský Apple officially confirmed the long-discussed acquisition of Beats Electronics, behind the iconic Beats by Dr. headphones. Dre and founded by music industry veteran Jimmy Iovine together with musician Dr. Dre. The amount of three billion dollars, converted to over sixty billion crowns, represents the largest sum paid by Apple for an acquisition and was 7,5 times the price for which Apple bought NeXT in 1997 in order to acquire its technologies and Steve Jobs.
Although the purchase of Beats Electronics is the first acquisition to break the billion dollar mark, Apple has made quite a number of acquisitions in the hundreds of millions of dollars in the past. We looked at the ten biggest acquisitions by Apple during the company's existence. While Apple isn't spending nearly as much as Google, for example, there are some interesting amounts for lesser-known companies. Unfortunately, not all the sums spent on the purchase of companies are known, so we are only based on publicly available figures.
1. Beats Electronics - $3 billion
Beats Electronics is a premium headphone manufacturer that has managed to gain the majority share in its category in five years on the market. Last year alone, the company had a turnover of over a billion dollars. In addition to headphones, the company also sells portable speakers and recently launched a streaming music service to compete with Spotify. It was the music service that should have been the wild card that convinced Apple to buy. Steve Jobs' long-time friend and collaborator Jimmy Iovine is also sure to be a big addition to the Apple team.
2. NeXT - $404 million
An acquisition that brought Steve Jobs back to Apple, who was elected CEO of Apple not long after his return, where he remained until his death in 2011. In 1997, the company desperately needed a successor to the existing operating system, which was very outdated, and was unable to develop on your own. Therefore, she turned to NeXT with its operating system NeXTSTEP, which became the cornerstone of the new version of the system. Apple also considered buying Be Jean-Louis Gassée's company, but Steve Jobs himself was an important link in the case of NeXT.
3. Anobit - $390 million
Apple's third largest acquisition, Anobit, was a maker of hardware, namely control chips for flash memory that control power consumption and have an impact on better performance. Since flash memories are part of all Apple's core products, the purchase was very strategic and the company also gained a great competitive technological advantage.
4. AuthenTec - $356 million
The fourth place was taken by the company AuthenTec, which specializes in fingerprint readers. The result of this acquisition was already known in the autumn of last year, it resulted in Touch ID. Since AuthenTec was among the two largest companies with the largest number of patents dealing with a given type of fingerprint reader, the competition will have a very hard time catching up with Apple in this regard. Samsung's attempt with the Galaxy S5 proves it.
5. PrimeSense - $345 million
SOCIETY PrimeSense for Microsoft, she developed the first Kinect, an accessory for the Xbox 360 that allowed movement to control games. PrimeSense is generally concerned with sensing movement in space, even thanks to miniaturized sensors that could later appear in some of Apple's mobile products.
6 PA Semi - $278 million
This company allowed Apple to develop its own designs of ARM processors for mobile devices, which we know under the designation Apple A4-A7. The acquisition of PA Semi allowed Apple to gain a decent lead against other manufacturers, after all, it was the first to introduce the 64-bit ARM processor that beats in the iPhone 5S and iPad Air. However, Apple does not manufacture processors and chipsets itself, it only develops their designs, and the hardware itself is manufactured by other companies, especially Samsung.
7. Quattro Wireless - $275 million
Around 2009, when mobile in-app advertising started to take off, Apple wanted to acquire a company that deals with such advertising. The biggest AdMob player ended up in the arms of Google, so Apple bought the second biggest company in the industry, Quattro Wireless. This acquisition gave rise to the iAds advertising platform, which debuted in 2010, but has not seen much expansion yet.
8. C3 Technologies - $267 million
A few years before Apple introduced its own map solution in iOS 6, it bought several cartography companies. The largest of these acquisitions concerned the company C3 Technologies, which dealt with 3D map technology, i.e. rendering a three-dimensional map based on existing materials and geometry. We can see this technology in the Flyover feature in Maps, however, there are only a limited number of places where it works.
9. Topsy - $200 million
Topsy was an analytics firm that focused on social networks, especially Twitter, from which it was able to track trends and sell valuable analytics data. Apple's intention with this company is not yet completely known, but it may be related to the advertising strategy for applications and iTunes Radio.
10 Intristry - $121 million
Before the acquisition in early 2010, Intristry was engaged in the production of semiconductors, while their technology was used, for example, in ARM processors. For Apple, a hundred engineers is an obvious addition to the team dealing with the designs of its own processors. The result of the acquisition has probably already been reflected in processors for iPhones and iPads.
Apple also bought a quality person during the acquisition with Next, so hopefully things will continue in the same way :)