Apple has done well on its own but the company has been known to make sudden acquisitions in the past.
This year alone, Apple has made 10 acquisitions from varying niches, including that of LinX (April), Metaio (May), Mapsense (September) and Faceshift (November). Considering the 10 businesses that Apple has acquired, why focus on these image-related companies?
Right now, there are sketchy rumors that link action-camera maker GoPro as a potential acquisition for the Cupertino company though nothing has been set in stone. While the scenario comes as a surprise, the rumor of such happening has somehow tweaked a bit of the stocks of GoPro, as mentioned via MarketWatch.
GoPro has seen its stock drop by 70% for 2015, a poor year overall. Checking out the trends, the GoPro stock has indeed been taking quite a beating for the last couple of months, seeing only a slight gain recently, thanks to a couple of rumors.
One is that of the company’s impending plan to release its first drone, which barely helped push the company’s fortunes.
With the company believed to be a likely candidate for Apple’s future acquisitions, the stock suddenly spiked a bit (16%) though nothing has really materialized in terms of the veracity of such rumor.
As we speak, there is no official word on whether Apple and GoPro are in actual talks of a possible deal. The Cupertino company has been known to acquire businesses that could be tied up with its current technology.
However, seeing that Apple already has its fair share of image-capturing businesses, adding GoPro as another line does seem debatable.
Further, it seems hard to believe that GoPro CEO and founder Nick Woodman is in such dire straits that would see him offering the business up for sale.
Woodman denied any trace of a possible merger or sale with Apple, as reported by Forbes.
As far as he is concerned, he doesn’t believe that Apple may be into (or interested in) making GoPro devices---well, at least not at that time. Nonetheless, the trends are changing and the demand for action cameras nowadays seems to be increasing.
Both Apple and GoPro have worked well in the past, seeing that Apple Stores are carrying GoPro products. However, all that is seen more as a business partnership than anything else so a big development like acquiring the company is an entirely different story.
Given its line of acquired business thus far, a lot of which are in the image-capturing niche, will Apple add another one soon? Apple has had a history of pulling fast ones but right now, we will just have to wait and see if Apple will pull the (surprise) trigger yet again.