Apple needs to take action

Eric Jackson writes for Forbes about what he thinks Apple should do.

Apple needs to start picking off strategic assets as if their life depends on it, rather than continuing on with a plodding attitude that doesn’t match the speed of their competitive environment.

This just sounds like advice from someone who knows nothing about how Apple works. As John Gruber pointed out, Apple’s product strategy is a thousand no’s for every yes.

Apple acquires a company to integrate it into Apple, not acquire something for the sake of it. Just because Facebook is going around buying companies doesn’t mean that Apple should do the same.

The writer strongly believes that Apple needs to take action:

No longer. Apple needs to start playing offense.

It’s time for Apple to get aggressive.

But he fails to explain why. Because Facebook is doing so is a weak argument.

Again, he thinks that spending will make the company better but he doesn’t give an explanation:

The bottom line is I think Zuckerberg or Musk (or pick another young entrepreneur like a David Sacks) would have no hesitation to use Apple’s cash and stock to make it a much better company.

He suggests that Apple buy Tesla:

Well, they could pay $400/share to take out Tesla (TSLA) and make an audacious huge play for the Internet-connected car, as well as snagging Musk into the fold in one fell swoop.

Yes, but it seems that Apple has found a way to do that without having to spend $50 billion.

It is a little coincidental that Jackson suggested that Apple should be aggressive in acquiring services since “it would nice for iMessage not to go down” and a couple of days later WhatsApp was down.