Apple may spend several billion dollars to obtain a "substantial stake" in Toshiba's memory chip business, according to Japanese public broadcaster NHK. Reuters cited NHK as saying Apple's stake would be greater than 20 percent.
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Given concerns from Japanese government officials about Toshiba selling "critical technologies" to overseas buyers, Apple would reportedly have Toshiba keep some shares so that the company retains partial Japanese ownership.
Apple is also considering teaming up with its manufacturing partner Foxconn, which is trying to acquire about 30 percent of the stake, the report said.
Foxconn allegedly offered Toshiba up to 3 trillion Japanese yen ($30 billion) as a standalone bid, but a subsequent report said Toshiba would likely reject the bid due to Foxconn's ties with China, where it operates multiple factories.
Apple's other manufacturing partner TSMC has reportedly already withdrawn its bid, while other potential suitors are said to include technology giants Amazon and Google and rival memory chipmakers SK Hynix and Western Digital. Apple itself was named as a potential bidder by a separate source earlier this month.
Toshiba announced plans to sell its NAND flash memory business in January in order to raise funds to cover write-down costs associated with its U.S. nuclear subsidiary Westinghouse Electric, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March. The company expects to face $9 billion in related charges.
Apple dual sources 32GB, 128GB, and 256GB flash storage from Toshiba and SK Hynix for the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.
Toshiba, facing an uncertain future, is supposedly expected to select the winning bidder of its memory chip business by June.
Top Rated Comments
(View all)Hope they are successful in pulling this deal off.
Very different investment.
Yours is a common misconception. Aside from the talent, culture capital, and streaming service that everyone focused on, the Beats acquisition turned out to be an ingeniously profitable hardware acquisition. Apple has grown it and Apple is now the largest seller of wireless headphones IN THE WORLD, and they have 60% of the entire premium headphone market IN THE WORLD. These headphones have a huge markup, and with wireless by now the largest, and growing exponentially, share of the revenue in headphones, Tim Cook has aptly demonstrated his business acumen.Hardware wise they got nudda from Beats....and have also invested almost zero in improving that hardware. Though I'm sure Beats headphones are also in that "amazing pipeline"
This is like buying the plastic factory to get cheaper Legos.
Except, there are dozens of companies wanting to buy the same legos from this company, and owning a sizable chunk of it would guarantee Apple would have a better supply of legos to sell.Sometimes it's just easier to negotiate a lower price and let the Lego company just make them.