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[LTCM]

(...) One way Apple has maintained premium pricing for its gadgets is by improving them each year. In the case of the iPhone, a large chunk of this improvement has come from the increased number of applications that can run on the handset.

Partners who develop these bear much of the cost. Apple vets the applications and distributes them in exchange for 30 percent of sales. Apple hasn’t historically run its online stores to maximise profits. Instead, the goal has been to make the devices more valuable and entrenched. The result is a virtuous circle. Consumers like the gadgets because they have become increasingly useful, and software developers follow the customers. Apple could, theoretically, extract bigger tolls – take 50 percent of revenue from sales, for example. Those increased revenues would fall right to the bottom line.

Yet developers could eventually turn elsewhere, and users might follow. Google, for example, plans to take only a 5 percent chunk of sales on games that it sells online, plus a small processing fee. Second, ratcheting up the toll might invite regulatory attention, because it smacks of anticompetitive behavior. While raising its revenue share could generate some short-run growth, it would be a bad sign for the company’s future.

Big acquisitions: Apple has $46 billion of cash and investments on its balance sheet. Mr Jobs may find this fast-growing stash comforting. But it isn’t earning much interest. Apple has wisely avoided big acquisitions. When many companies see their growth slowing, however, they often try to buy it through “transformative acquisitions” in the way Intel is purchasing McAfee or HP buying 3PAR. Apple’s cash could buy a majority of companies in the S&P 500. Surely it could find a big firm that would generate a better return than what it earns in the bank, right?

Don’t count on it. Integrating two big companies more often than not results in unproductive executive infighting and bloated expenses instead of valuable new product innovations. Most damningly, sellers usually extract the gains. Just look at Cisco. The firm is an efficient M&A machine, yet its shareholders have received little benefit over the past decade from CEO John Chambers’ shopping. If Apple ever headed down this route, it would be a sign that the firm has transformed itself into a lesser company.

http://blogs.reuters.com/columns/2010/0 ... ple-stock/