On one of the podcasts, TMV were pondering the liklihood of Apple ever buying Palm and Molly stated that Apple does not build its business by buying other companies. I had disagreed with that, pointing to Apple's purchase of Soundjam (for Itunes), NeXT and others which opened a lot of new business opportunity for Apple. Since I challenged Molly to set the record straight, she kindly clarified and reaffirmed her stance and I wanted to post it here (with her permission) since she is still on travel until tomorrow. Here it is:
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Kevin,
I believe and continue to believe that Apple is not a company that builds its business on buying other companies. I don't believe I maintained that they don't buy software. While they may periodically subsume smaller companies, Apple can usually be counted on to fill its own product holes by building its own product (even when that product may be built from the kernel, in some cases literally, of some other software or hardware -- I certainly never said that they are not fundamentally derivative, in fact, I think they are) . I stand by the statement, and especially in the context of our discussion that day, which was about whether Apple would buy Palm. I said, specifically, that Apple does not buy companies, and the context is that they do not buy companies as a means to entering a given market -- in this case, the cell phone/smart phone market. Feel free to post this response in the forum if you like, or I'll do it when I'm back from Orlando.
-Molly

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