The story has spread like wildfire. Apple is in talks with Beats Audio to acquire the company for $3.2 billion. Now that figure really is chump change for Apple, with over $150 billion dollars on hand, but it’s nonetheless far more than the company has previously spent on any single transaction of this sort. Apple, you see, rarely budgets more than a tenth of that amount in acquiring smaller companies for technology.

Indeed, Apple’s purchase of Steve Jobs’ NeXT for $429 million in 1996 was regarded as the biggest deal ever, particularly when viewed in 2014 dollars. Today, that transaction would be valued at over $651 million, so you see where I’m heading.

While other companies have spent a lot more money for mergers and acquisitions, this is Apple, and that number is extremely high for them. So the logical question, then, is why? Why would Apple want to acquire a company managed by a couple of record industry moguls? Where’s the logic in that?

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This article was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2014 at 12:00 AM and is filed under News and tagged with: Apple, NeXT, Steve Jobs.