[amunicio]

They should buy Sony. It would give them:

- Universal Studios

- PlayStation (aka a big foothold in the living room) and some of the most creative game studios

- Awesome displays (TVs)

- Bigger footprint in the consumer electronics market

- ... and most important of all the best camera sensors in the market (including camera phone sensors).

[scarface74]

The console market is minuscule compared to the phone market.

Sony has only sold 75 million PS4's since it was released (https://www.businessinsider.com/ps4-playstation-4-lifetime-s...). Apple sells almost that many iPhones in a good quarter.

TVs are big and bulky and have something like an 8 year replacement cycle.

[amunicio]

But it would be 82 million Apple TVs overnight after a software upgrade.

Not to mention PlayStation Vue could become Apple Vue.

[scarface74]

And PS Vue would only be of use in the US.

At the end of the day, PS Vue doesn’t offer anything compelling enough to acquire. A few subscribers and a bunch of licensing deals to broadcast TV over the Internet. Apple could get the same deals as Sony, Sling, Directv, Hulu, etc. Cable networks aren’t exactly being stingy about licensing.

[saagarjha]

There's no way that Apple would allow tvOS to run on unaudited hardware like the PS4.

[robin_reala]

82m as of today: https://venturebeat.com/2018/07/31/playstation-4-sales-pass-...

[scarface74]

5 years to sell 82 million?

Apple’s Watch business will probably do better than that 5 years from introduction. It’s probably more profitable.

[jonhendry18]

"TVs are big and bulky and have something like an 8 year replacement cycle."

Exactly. TVs are basically furniture.

[scarface74]

I was off - I’ve seen reports of 10 years....

https://www.digitaltveurope.com/2017/11/22/ihs-tv-replacemen...

[collinf]

Universal Studios is owned by Comcast [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Pictures

[amunicio]

You are correct. My bad, Sony owns Columbia Pictures not Universal.

[lechiffre10]

Again, there is a ZERO chance a Japanese company would allow an American company to take it over for cultural reasons. That won't happen.

[rpiguy]

Sony is not a Keiretsu. They are fair game.

[thephyber]

Consider the other way around. Would Apple want to buy a decades-old consumer electronics company? Sony has been stagnant in my eyes, even before the NKorea hack.

[protomyth]

Have you checked the direction of Sony's stock lately?

[po]

IMO, This is an invalid, outdated view of Japanese culture.

Japanese companies, even large culturally important brands, get purchased by foreign entities. A controlling stake of Sharp was purchased by Foxconn two years ago, for example.

[jest3r1]

Sony does not make it's own display panels.

They have been buying LCD panels from Samsung of South Korea in a joint venture:

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=4344101&page=1

And their new OLED TV is mostly the work of LG Display:

https://www.theverge.com/ces/2017/1/10/14222986/sony-bravia-...

[Steko]

The selling point of Sony TV's is not just the panel but the processing, similarly to how Apple does not make it's own camera sensors, but it does do a lot of it's own procession to optimize your photos.

[jarsin]

Yup and music / hollywood content library. It's a match made in heaven but Mr Cook is going to spend 1 trillion on paper stock before he does anything else...