8 things Apple could buy with its $178bn cash hoard

New Zealand

Apple's bank account continues to rise to stratospherically silly levels. Apple ended December 2014 with a mind-blowing $178bn in the bank. That's a mind-blowing amount of money, but Apple has has been sitting on a Scrooge McDuck-style stockpile of gold for a few years now.

Apple Q1 2015 financial results

"By and large, my view is for cash that we don't need - with some level of buffer - we want to give back," said Apple CEO Cook. "It may come across that we are, but we're not hoarders." So what on earth is Apple going to spend such a large amount of money on?

For the last few years we've been running stories about how Apple could buy Lithuania or Zimbabwe many times over. However, Apple has clearly moved up the social scale and can now afford New Zealand, whose entire GDP in 2014 was $150bn.

Apple's bank account continues to rise to stratospherically silly levels. Apple ended December 2014 with a mind-blowing $178bn in the bank. That's a mind-blowing amount of money, but Apple has has been sitting on a Scrooge McDuck-style stockpile of gold for a few years now.

Apple Q1 2015 financial results

"By and large, my view is for cash that we don't need - with some level of buffer - we want to give back," said Apple CEO Cook. "It may come across that we are, but we're not hoarders." So what on earth is Apple going to spend such a large amount of money on?

For the last few years we've been running stories about how Apple could buy Lithuania or Zimbabwe many times over. However, Apple has clearly moved up the social scale and can now afford New Zealand, whose entire GDP in 2014 was $150bn.

Every Apple employee could be a millionaire

Apple has more than 92,000 employees, which is a lot - until you realise that Apple has almost $2 million in the bank for each and every one of them. Apple employees do it for the love, though, so they would no doubt turn it down.

Apple could buy Netflix, kickstart the television revolution, and barely notice

Apple is keen to get into the television business. It can do the hardware, but what Apple is rumoured to be struggling with is getting the rights to shows.

Tim Cook could buy Netflix for $28bn and still have the amount of money it had in the bank last year.

Apple 'working on Netflix rival' for 4th gen Apple TV

Apple could buy Amazon (for no reason)

It sounds a little crazy, and to be fair it would have us all scratching our heads. But Apple could buy Amazon and extend its reach into the physical world.

Amazon's net worth is $90bn, which isn't bad for a company that has only ever posted slim profits (and even posted losses in 2014). Amazon is almost the cultural antithesis of Apple, with its razor-thin margins; but there's no denying it's sitting at the heart of a shopping revolution. Still: it'd be a weird purchase.

4 things Apple could learn from Amazon

Most of the American stock market

Apple has so much money that it could buy 80 percent of the top 500 companies listed in S&P (Standard & Poor's) stock index. No, we've no idea what it would do with them either, but it'd be funny while it lasted.

Both ARM and Intel

Wow! We're pretty sure this one wouldn't be allowed by the EU or the Federal Trade commission.

ARM's market cap is $24.54bn and it continues to go from strength to strength. While Appple is buying chip design companies, it could also snap up Intel for $129.22bn and leave the rest of the computer industry scratching its head at what to do.

They could use AMD chips, we suppose, but Apple could even pick them up for another $3bn.

Three and a half thousand tons of gold

Cook could easily out-bling new Apple employee Dr Dre by buying more than three thousand tons of gold (3,693 to be exact). That's a lot of gold chains. Bling bling!

Apple could easily buy Tesla and take over the car industry

Tesla has done more to push innovation in the car industry than any company in the past 50 years. Sure, we may not all want to drive electric cars yet, but there's no doubt that we'll all end up driving non-petrol cars one-day.

Tesla has a good chance of owning the future of transportation in America, and it's only worth $23bn. It would be a big distraction for Apple.

Apple still can't afford to own Facebook

Facebook is out of Apple's reach.

Facebook is a company that Steve Jobs reportedly admired, and Cook sees as an ally rather than an enemy. It'd be a huge purchase, but certainly not an odd one (it'd make more sense on paper than Beats at any rate). Facebook is worth $211bn and unlikely to be worth less any time soon. Apple can't buy it just yet.

Maybe next year.

Apple's cash hoard isn't enough to buy Google

Money can't buy you love. Apple's money can't buy it Google either, a company it has little love for.

Google's valued at $352bn, putting it out of reach of Apple (itself valued at $700bn). It'd be worth it just to hear Cook say "You know, it was just Steve's last wish", before pulling the plug.

5 things Apple could learn from Google (but probably shouldn't)

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