But where Instagram made Facebook a pic (versus words) site, it is unclear what major change Box would bring to Apple's product lines.Ģ. Something akin of Instagram's growth for Facebook would be required. Clearly Apple would have to unleash an enormous development program to have Box make any meaningful impact in a company with over $500 billion of revenue. But it also has only $300 million of annual revenue. Box is valued at $1.45 billion, so easily affordable. IBM has already partnered with Box, and is working on applications in areas like financial services. Box is widely used by enterprises today, and would help grow where iCloud is weak. Box could be a great acquisition to help bring more enterprise developers to Apple. Let's look at some favorite analyst acquisition targets to explain:ġ. Remember, after all revenue gains and losses were summed, Apple's revenue fell $7.6 billion last quarter. Each would be targeted at some sort of market extension, but like Beats the impact can be hard to find. Although Apple has over $200 million of cash it can use for acquisitions, unfortunately this tactic can be a very difficult way to actually find new growth. This is a classic market extension intended to sustain sales with more applications while making no significant improvements in the "core" product itself.Īcquisitions are not a solution for declining sales in core markets.Īnd Apple's CEO has said he intends to make more acquisitions - which will surely be done to shore up weaknesses in existing products and extend into new markets.
With these partnerships Apple is growing its developer community, while circumventing Microsoft's long-held domain, promoting sales to companies as well as individuals.Īnd Apple has shown a willingness to help grow this market by introducing the iPhone 6se which is smaller and cheaper in order to obtain more traction with corporate buyers and corporate employees who have been iPhone resistant. This extends the iPhone, a product long thought of as great for consumers, deeply into enterprise sales. Now two very large enterprise players are building applications on iOS devices. This announcement builds on last year's similar announcement with IBM. This announcement revealed that SAP would ask developers on its platform to program in Swift in order to support iOS devices, rather than having a PC-first mentality. Of even greater note was last week's announcement that Apple inked a partnership with SAP to develop uses for iPhones and iPads built on the SAP ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) platform.