Skip to Content

Apple's $18 billion stash

Where's all that cash that Apple made from the iPhone and all those iPods, Macs, and iTunes downloads last year going? Why, right into Apple's mattress. According to the Financial Times, Apple currently has $18 billion sitting on their balance sheet, doing nothing much at all. And they're OK with that -- Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer recently said in the Q1 conference call that they like having that "flexibility." And after all, you never know when you might need to drop $18 billion on something important.

All that money doing nothing isn't so great for Apple's investors though, some of whom apparently want a piece of the pie. They might like to see dividends, stock buybacks, or even actual spending come out of that on Apple's part (later in the piece, I'm surprised to see that Apple only spends 3% of their sales on R&D, while Microsoft spends 14%). But no -- Apple is flush with cash from all their big sales numbers, and they want to apparently stay that way.

[Via Ars]

Where's all that cash that Apple made from the iPhone and all those iPods, Macs, and iTunes downloads last year going? Why, right into...
 

Add a Comment

*0 / 3000 Character Maximum

17 Comments

Filter by:
jm130500

The iTunes store is a loss-leader for Apple. They actually lose money on it. It's an investment for them to get people to buy iPods which they actually make money on.

February 26 2008 at 10:31 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Billy K

If you had gone from founding one of the premier computer makers in the world to having the company stolen from you and driven nearly to bankruptcy, then forced to grovel in front of Bill Gates, you might sock away a few pessnies, too.

Steve says, "never again...."

February 26 2008 at 9:43 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Paul D

I just hope they're not keeping that $18 billion in US dollars, because if they are, it's lost billions of dollars of actual value over the past few years.

February 26 2008 at 9:41 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Chris

They're saving this money to pay for all the iPhones they have to replace. Look at the forums and see the people who are having to return their phones because the screens are bubbling.

February 26 2008 at 4:36 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
mabhatter

nobody was ever upset when Bill kept 40+ billion for microsoft's war chest... where do you think the money for Yahoo is coming from? Apple is no where close to having the kind of cash power microsoft does.

February 26 2008 at 2:56 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
jrizzle

theyre saving it to buy up the soon to be sold band of radio waves

February 26 2008 at 12:44 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
artifex

Great picture, Mike :)

February 25 2008 at 11:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
hafiz

Dude, I'm telling you, they're planning to buy microsoft :)

February 25 2008 at 11:37 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Brett

I'm wondering if Microsoft puts a larger percent of its sales into R&D because their core software business is 99% gross profit vs. 60% or whatever profit apple makes on it's more hardware based lineup.

February 25 2008 at 10:47 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Matt Sayler

"I'm surprised to see that Apple only spends 3% of their sales on R&D, while Microsoft spends 14%)"

Are you kidding? Microsoft has a huge R&D department that is likely one of the largest corporate publishers of CS research..

Not that that makes them cool, but they do spend money on R&D.

February 25 2008 at 9:04 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Buy an ad here

Hot Apps on TUAW

Tweets

© 2012 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.