For Hints at Apple’s Plans, Read Its Shopping List
By BRIAN X. CHEN

One company used sensors to read body movements. Another recommended TV programs. Several others offered location and mapping services.

All of them had at least one thing in common: They were among the more than 20 relatively small companies Apple says it has bought within the last 15 months.

As fellow tech giants have reached billion-dollar deals in recent years to add significant new arms to their businesses — like Facebook buying WhatsApp for as much as $19 billion, and Microsoft buying Nokia’s handset business for more than $7.1 billion — Apple has ventured down a different path.

The company has avoided jaw-dropping takeovers in favor of a series of smaller deals, using the companies to buttress or fill a gap in products that already exist or are in development.

Still, in the past few years, Apple has gradually increased its overall spending on these acquisitions. In the last quarter, for instance, Apple spent $525 million on acquisitions, nearly double what it spent in the same period a year ago.

And while the deals may be small — particularly given Apple’s nearly $160 billion cash hoard — they offer a window into where the secretive company is headed and which products and services it is trying to build or improve.

Apple’s biggest acquisition last year was PrimeSense, a company with about 150 employees that Apple bought for $300 million to $350 million, according to reports. PrimeSense developed sensors that helped Microsoft let Xbox owners control games using body movements, and some analysts say Apple could eventually apply PrimeSense’s skills and technology to a television set. Apple also bought Matcha.tv, a service that recommended things to watch on TV, another acquisition that signals its strong interest in the living room.

And Apple’s purchase of location data services like Locationary, HopStop and Embark suggests a steadfast interest in Internet services — especially mapping, where Apple has been harshly criticized for lacking the competence of its competitors Google and Nokia.

Filling Out the iPhone

Apple has acquired several companies in recent years whose technologies had potential value for its smartphones.

“They’re pre-emptively investing in areas where they think there are opportunities to grow,” said Ben Bajarin, a consumer technology analyst for Creative Strategies who follows Apple. “Without doubt Apple is a bit more focused and lean in their approach and disciplined about the things they buy.”

But as the growth of Apple’s profit has slowed in the past couple of years, some pundits and analysts have called for the company to break into other markets and create new revenue streams through a game-changing deal. Investors and analysts have suggested that Apple should buy Tesla to build cars, Facebook to get into advertising, Netflix to get deeper into the entertainment industry, and even Yahoo to get into the search business.

Apple declined to comment for this article, but none of those possibilities appear close to coming true.

Still, Timothy D. Cook, the company’s chief executive, has said in the past that Apple would have no problem paying billions for another company if it would help Apple make more high-quality products.

And the company is well aware how a blockbuster deal can help. In 1996, Apple acquired NeXT, the computer company founded by Steven P. Jobs after he had been forced out of Apple, largely to bring Mr. Jobs back to the company. It turned out to be one of the most transformative tech acquisitions in history: With Mr. Jobs back at the helm, Apple rose from near-bankruptcy into a dominant company.

But in general, spending huge amounts of money on a buyout comes with major risks, said Brent Thill, an analyst for UBS AG, a financial services company that has clients in the tech industry.

For one, the founders of an acquired company — the star talent who receive the most money in a high-paying acquisition — often tend to take the money and run to another new venture. For another, there can be cultural disagreements: A small company that is focused on introducing new technologies may not line up with the interests of its owner, which are to rake in greater profit.

Also, when a small company merges with a bigger business, it becomes less nimble because it is tied to legacy technologies of a larger corporation, and it can no longer innovate as quickly to keep up with competitors.

The history of the tech industry is littered with big deals that turned out poorly. In 2010, Hewlett-Packard bought Palm, the struggling mobile device maker, for $1.2 billion — and shuttered Palm’s operations after releasing the TouchPad, a tablet that was only on sale for about seven weeks before it was killed.

Similarly, Google bought the legacy handset maker Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in 2012 and, after sales of its first flagship smartphone were disappointing, reached a deal to sell it to Lenovo for $2.9 billion

“A lot of the tech acquisitions, in my opinion, have gone way off the tracks,” Mr. Thill said.

Apple has kept the stakes low in recent years. Several of the companies it has bought had as few as one or two people, like SnappyLabs, a one-man developer of a camera app. The founder, John Papandriopoulos, an electrical engineer, had developed an app to make the iPhone’s camera take high-resolution photos at a faster frame rate than Apple’s built-in camera software. Apple bought the company this year and made Mr. Papandriopoulos a software engineer.

These tiny acquisitions, made in large part to add the skills of an individual as much as the company, are known as acquihires in Silicon Valley. Most other major tech companies make them frequently as well. Facebook has been especially keen about buying small companies, like when it acquired Beluga, a group messaging app, to improve Facebook’s messaging services, and when it bought Push Pop Press, a digital book maker, to make its newsreader Paper.

When Apple buys a start-up with more than a couple of people, it is often looking for groups with specific skills who work well together as a team, according to a person who worked at a start-up Apple acquired last year, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press. Apple then takes these small teams and assigns them to new projects or pairs them with older teams at Apple.

Other deals are made in an effort to quickly blend new technology into existing products. For example, its 2008 purchase of PA Semi, a chip maker, helped Apple design more advanced processors for iPhones and iPads. And its 2012 acquisition of AuthenTec helped enable the fingerprint-sensing technology that eventually wound up in new iPhones.

Other deals are clearly part of Apple’s effort to play catch-up in one particular area: maps.

In 2012, Apple updated the built-in maps software for its mobile devices to replace Google’s mapping data with its own. Apple’s maps, which were lackluster compared with Google’s, quickly drew scrutiny, and Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, issued an apology.

To help the company catch up, last year it bought Embark and Hopstop, which provide public transit directions, and WiFiSlam, a company that provided maps for indoor areas. Apple in previous years acquired three other mapping companies: Placebase, Poly9 and C3 Technologies. 

“Maps was a place where they did a lot of acquisitions, and that was a product that came out very flat,” said Maynard Um, a financial analyst for Wells Fargo. “They had the option to invest organically to get that product up to speed or go out and acquire other things.”

But just as those acquisitions suggest areas where the company is trying to catch up, others offer strong hints about new areas where the company is aiming to be a leader.

One of those deals was reached with PrimeSense, the chip maker that makes 3-D sensors. Although the company’s technology has so far been used mostly for applications on a TV, and Apple would likely look into similar uses, Mr. Bajarin of Creative Strategies said he expected Apple to look far and wide for other uses of the technology. Possible options, he said, could include things like turning the iPhone’s camera into a 3-D scanner, which could send images to be reproduced by a 3-D printer, for instance.

“Apple has historically never done anything because someone told them to do something,” Mr. Um said. “They do what they think is right and they go down that path.”

蘋果併購 走小資路線

近年來美國科技業巨擘動輒砸下數十億甚至逾百億美元進行單一購併，然而坐擁一千六百億美元現金的蘋果公司卻一向避免「狼吞虎嚥」，反而以步步為營方式購併數十家小型公司，來強化、彌補本身的技術缺口，或為推出新產品做準備。由蘋果購併的對象顯示，蘋果對地圖、電視機，乃至三D照相機都有濃厚興趣。

過去幾年，Google曾砸一百廿五億美元買摩托羅拉（今年稍早又以廿九億美元轉賣給聯想），微軟先花八十五億美元買Skype，再以七十二億買諾基亞，臉書上周以一百九十億美元大手筆購併WhatsApp更引人側目。

蘋果卻沒有砸錢買名牌。紐約時報報導，過去幾年間蘋果購併的總金額逐年增加；上一季斥資五點二五億美元，比上年同季增加一倍；過去十五個月蘋果共買下廿多家公司。但這些公司都是小公司，有的甚至只有一、兩名員工；蘋果通常會再找其他人與這些員工組成技術團隊，指派新的研究計畫，或與蘋果的老團隊合作。

這類小規模購併，主要是為了強化蘋果公司的技術。例如今年購併SnappyLabs攝影app開發公司，只有創辦者一人，卻能讓iPhone以更快的速度拍攝出高畫質相片。其他交易則是希望把新科技迅速併入既有產品中。例如蘋果二○○八買下PA Semi晶片公司，以強化iPhone與iPad的處理機；2012年購併AuthenTec，使iPhone擁有指紋感應功能。

2012年發生「地圖不靈」事件，執行長庫克為此向用戶道歉，於是蘋果先後購併六家與地圖技術有關的公司，以強化地圖功能。

蘋果去年最大手筆的購併動作，是以三億到三點五億美元買下PrimeSense公司。這家公司約有一百五十位員工，研發各種感應器，讓微軟的Xbox遊戲機能藉由玩家的肢體動作來進行操控。分析師表示，蘋果可能會把PrimeSense的技術與科技用在電視機上，也可能把iPhone的照相機轉為三D掃瞄器，能把影像傳送給三D印表機來重現。

富國銀行金融分析師烏姆表示，「蘋果一向不會隨人起舞，只做自己認為正確的事，並一路走下去。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/24/technology/for-hints-at-apples-plans-read-its-shopping-list.html

2014-02-25．聯合報．A15．國際．編譯任中原