Amaya Toman There have been, are and will be a lot of more or less bizarre estimates, rumors and speculations about Apple. One of them, which began to be talked about in the second half of April 1995, talked about the fact that the Canon company was planning a complete or partial acquisition of Apple. Speculation began to abound after the Cupertino firm announced its not-so-positive financial results.
However, Canon has denied any interest in the company, and neither Apple nor Canon have ever publicly confirmed any deal. Canon might - especially from today's point of view - seem like a very unlikely candidate for Apple's acquisition, but in the eighties and nineties of the last century, the company's name was very important in the field of technology.
After the founder of the Macintosh project, Jef Raskin, left Apple, Canon roped him into their ranks and gave him the opportunity to develop his own vision of the Macintosh. A computer called the Canon Cat, which was introduced in 1987, did not meet with much success despite expectations.
Canon Cat Computer and Jef Raskin:
In June 1989, Canon paid $100 million for a 16,67% stake in Jobs' company NeXT, which Apple bought a little later. Canon not only supported the company financially in the early nineties, but also produced an optical drive for NeXT Computer. Steve Jobs eventually sold the hardware division of his NeXT to Canon in 1993.
Rumors that Canon was planning to acquire Apple first surfaced when the company was headed by Mike Spindler. Other companies that could potentially buy Apple included, for example, IBM or (now defunct) Sun Microsystems. The companies Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Sony, Philips and Toshiba were also approached, but the respective discussions did not get very far.
In the end, there was not even an agreement between Apple and Canon. In April 1995, better times began to flash for Apple. Thanks to the increased demand for Macintoshes in the second half of 1995, Apple managed to earn $73 million. It was more than four times the amount the Cupertino company earned for the same quarter a year earlier, and better times were not (relatively) long in coming.
Source: Cult of Mac
