Is the venerable Steve Jobs and his trusty band of acolytes plotting a hostile takeover or acquisition of Sony with Club Cupertino’s $51 billion war chest?
Although many analysts doubt that such a deal would ever take place, reports of a potential acquisition sent Sony stocks up nearly three percent at one point.
Unsurprisingly, Sony has declined to comment on the rumors, which were kickstarted by a recent Barron’s report endorsing the plausibility of an acquisition engineered and executed by Apple.
As AppleInsider’s Sam Oliver notes, another possible source for the frenetic rumors may be a recent Bloomberg interview with former Apple CEO John Sculley.
“I remember (Sony co-founder) Akio Morita gave us one of the first Sony Walkmans. None of us had ever seen anything like that before, because there had never been a product like that,” Sculley told Bloomberg.
“This was 25 years ago and Steve was fascinated by it. The first thing he did was take it apart, and he looked at every single part. How the fit and finish was done, how it was built.”
However, despite Steve’s obvious admiration for Sony, Ashok Kumar, an analyst with Rodman & Renshaw, remains convinced that Apple has absolutely no intention of buying the Japanese-based company.
“We [really] don’t see any acquisitions of any size,” Kumar told Reuters.
“[Firstly], Apple is happy to keep its cash under the pillow. [And secondly], it would [obviously] be a [clear] cultural miss.”
