Apple Mulling Biggest Deal Since Jobs' 1996 Return

Apple Mulling Biggest Deal Since Jobs' 1996 Return

Apple(AAPL_) is in talks to buy a flash storage company for mobile products called Anobit Technologies for $400 million to $500 million, Israeli newspaper Calcalist reports.
If a deal were to materialize, it would be Apple's biggest company acquisition since bringing legendary founder Steve Jobs back to the company by buying NeXT Computers in 1996. For a company that's relied on inventing and growing internal products to win consumer loyalty, a flash-storage focused deal could potentially allow for greater data storage on its mobile devices.



Apple already uses some of the flash product offerings of Herzeliya, Israel -based Anobit, which was founded in June 2006 with $76 million in venture capital raised by Battery Ventures, Pitango Venture Capital, and other strategic investors, according to its Web site. Currently, the company also has 21 memory signal processing-related patents, according to its Web site.
Anobit's attraction for Apple could lie in its manufacture of embedded flash controllers for smartphone and tablet computers, which improve the performance of device flash connectivity. This might mesh well with Apple's mobile product data storage needs.

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For Apple, an acquisition would be a rare sight. As part of a consortium of investors including Microsoft(MSFT_), Sony(SNE_), Research In Motion(RIMM_) and EMC(EMC_), Apple acquired patents from bankrupt Nortel in a July deal that totaled $4.5 billion. The consortium beat out Google(GOOG_) in their bid.
Otherwise, the company's biggest merger is a $400 million purchase of NeXT Computers to buy its operating system and bring Steve Jobs back to the company he founded in 1976. Jobs died in October, succumbing to a multi-year battle with pancreatic cancer.




The Cupertino, Calif., -based company now run by chief executive Tim Cook has only cut seventeen deals in its history totaling less than $5 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Currently, Apple sits on $81.6 billion in cash and short term investments, according its financial statements.

source: thestreet.com