A VentureBeat report was able to identify most of the companies that Cupertino, California-based Apple has bought in the past year and four months. The search for official documentation for the said purchases was initiated by the news site after Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook revealed in the company's annual meeting today that Apple had purchased 23 firms in the past 16 months.
According to the website, they were able to find official documentation for 16 of these 23 purchases. These companies were SnappyLabs, Catch, BroadMap, Topsy, PrimeSense, Cue, AlgoTrim, Embark, Matcha, Passif Semiconductor, HopStop, Locationary, WiFiSlam, Particle, Color Labs and Burstly.
While documentation was found only on these 16 companies, the report also added two more firms to the list but did not find official confirmation for them. These two firms are predictive search app developer Grokr and health-tracking watch maker Basis Science.
Established tech firms like Apple, Yahoo, IBM, Oracle and Cisco want to remain in the loop and acquisitions are one way for them to remain relevant. Apple has a lot of cash to make these deals possible, the report said.
A VentureBeat report on January 23, 2013 revealed that Apple's cash hoard is as much as $137 billion, enough to buy everyone on earth a $20 lunch or sufficient cash to buy a $300 iPodTouch for everyone living in the US, UK and Germany.
That figure is comprised of its quarterly revenue of $54 billion and quarterly profit amounting to $13.1 billion. Apple already had a cash pile of $121 billion and for that quarter $16 billion was added. Of the $137 billion total, $94 billion is found offshore, the report said.
Other technology firms also have hefty amounts of cash stashed in their bank accounts. Google's cash hoard is more than $50 billion while Microsoft runs to more than $60 billion, the January report said.
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