The suggestion that IBM Corp was seriously considering buying Apple Computer Inc was first reported here way back in the first week of 1991 (CI No 2,381), and it would have made much more sense then that it does now, but the San Francisco Chronicle ran a story on Saturday saying that IBM was looking at buying a minority stake in Apple. IBM declined to comment on the report, but it is believed to have told shareholders that it has $8,000m of cash and marketable securities in its locker and was about to do something big with it. The Chronicle quoted sources in Silicon Valley as saying that while AT&T Corp also has held talks with Apple, IBM is much closer to an agreement. It is known that James Cannavino, IBM’s senior vice-president for strategic planning, held three days of talks with Apple chief executive Michael Spindler last week, but some reports say that they were simply discussing details of a planned follow-on to the PowerPC Reference Platform that would meet Apple’s objections to the specification as it is currently defined.
