Apple Computer Inc shares were up $4.125 at $37.875, within a whisker of its year high on Wednesday after gossip swept through Wall Street that the company was about to be acquired, with Motorola Inc the name on most people’s lips: the other name mentioned is AT&T Corp, but that doesn’t seem very likely, and IBM Corp is still not out of the frame – there is some strange talk that now the company has amassed $8,000m in cash and marketable securities, it is under pressure to do something with it, and that it is therefore about to bid for Apple… that just seems silly because IBM now has significant debt and needs all the cash it can raise – and anyway would surely bid new IBM shares, not cash, for Apple; many analysts seem to think that an Apple-Motorola link would not make sense, but Motorola has made it clear that despite the years of red ink at the Motorola Computer Group it is determined to make the business a success, and that would be a lot easier with an acquisition to give it critical mass; Apple is playing in a lot of the communications areas that create demand for Motorola equipment, and with Apple would be as big as Hewlett-Packard Co, doing some $20,000m a year.
