Apple Struggles to Make Big Deals, Hampering Strategy Shifts – Bloomberg (Feb 15, 2017)
This is well trodden territory, but what’s new here is really the sources connected to various entities Apple has had negotiations with in the past, who suggest that its negotiating tactics are a major factor in its ability to get big deals done. But I still think this article is missing the single biggest factor when it comes to Apple and major acquisitions: cultural fit. Apple’s culture is unique and arguably its single biggest asset, but almost every company Apple might consider buying will have a different culture. When it’s a tiny acqui-hire, that doesn’t matter so much – it’s more akin to hiring new employees, and you can both test each one for fit and train them appropriately. That’s much harder to do on a scale of hundreds or thousands of employees, which is why Apple tends to make small technology acquisitions, often in the early stages of their business, rather than big buys. Even Beats, its biggest acquisition to date, was actually a fairly small team, since manufacturing was outsourced, and fit largely into two small pockets within Apple rather than having to be integrated into the company as a whole. To my mind, it’s this issue of cultural fit rather than the price tag or the negotiating tactics that prevents Apple from making bigger acquisitions, and it’s the single biggest question everyone should be asking if Apple ever does pull the trigger on a really big one.
via Bloomberg
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