If you've been building a company in hopes that Apple may acquire you and your technology, you may have made a bad call.
As reported by Bloomberg, Apple has slowed down its pace of acquiring other companies in recent years. The company, which reached as high as acquiring a company every three to four weeks at its peak, has significantly slowed down its acquisitions over the last two years.
The slowdown comes about a year and a half after Apple CEO Tim Cook said that "Apple had acquired 100 companies in the past six years -- more than one a month on average."
The company spent just $33 million on payments connected to acquisitions in its last fiscal year and $169 million in the first nine months of the current year, according to regulatory filings. That’s down from $1.5 billion in fiscal 2020.
What does the slowdown mean?
According to the report, the slowdown is likely due to the company being timider about acquisitions during a time of economic uncertainty over the last few years with the pandemic and recent inflation.
Despite that, Apple has purchased a number of companies over the last couple of years including Primephonic, Music AI, and Credit Kudos. The first two were to bolster Apple Music and the last helped the company internalize its financing capabilities. Primephonic is eventually expected to debut either within Apple Music or as its own app that could be named Apple Music Classical.
While many of the acquisitions that Apple makes don't get much coverage as they tend to be quite secret, there is always a handful that makes the news due to their size.
The most widely known acquisition that Apple has ever made is likely Beats. Apple acquired both Beats Electronics and Beats Music for over a billion dollars. The former helped Apple expand its headphone offering, while the latter served as the basis for the Apple Music we enjoy today.
