豪言服务业务四年翻倍，苹果或收购媒体巨头

由于业界普遍预期下一代iPhone将是一款重磅产品，苹果股价最近再创新高，公司市值突破了7,000亿美元。

为了继续推高股价，苹果正在想方设法让投资者相信，除了一款超级酷的“10周年纪念版”新iPhone，苹果还有几手没打出的好牌。上周，苹果高管就宣称，要在未来四年内，将年收入240亿美元的服务业务再翻上一番。

苹果的这一宣言让部分行业分析师有些摸不着头脑，因为实际上苹果的服务业务收入（包括iTunes Store上所有音乐和电影的销售分成、各种应用软件的销售分成，以及苹果音乐服务的订阅费用等 ）的增长率已经呈现出减缓的趋势。在去年的假日季，苹果服务业务的收入增长率为18%，显著低于2015年同期的26%。据高盛集团的分析师西蒙娜•詹可夫斯基称，分析师们预计未来几年苹果服务业务的年增长率将下降到14%左右。

在短短四年内，苹果怎样才能在服务业务上实现额外240亿美元的年收入呢？这个数字几乎是Netflix销售额的三倍，约等于高通、哈里伯顿或麦当劳的全年销售额。就此，长期观察苹果动态的分析师托尼•萨克纳西上周进行了一番推测。

苹果真的已经庞大到就连一项新业务也能在四年里超过麦当劳的地步了吗？投行伯恩斯坦的分析师预计，就算苹果的安装基数（即使用iPhone和iPad的总用户数）能够以比较健康的27%的增长率增长，而且每名用户未来四年在苹果服务业务上的支出都增长了20%，苹果离它的目标依然有130亿美元的差距。瑞联分析师史蒂夫•米路诺维奇的假设对苹果更加宽容，但即便按他的估算，苹果也有50到80亿美元的差距。

在萨克纳西、米路诺维奇以及许多华尔街分析师看来，这一差距有力地表明，苹果正在策划所谓的“无机增长”，简单说来就是通过大规模的收并购来实现这个目标。

亦真亦假

自从宣布这一目标以来，苹果CEO蒂姆•库克等公司高管就不时在各种场合谈起他们的战略。苹果一向有对新产品严格保密的传统，而且在谈判之前就公布收购目标也是一种愚蠢的行为。

苹果可能已经规划出了几条可能的路径，收购可能只是当内部增长的乐观预期落空后才会使用的一招。这可能也是苹果财务总监卢卡•马艾斯特利的看法。最近他在出席高盛集团在旧金山举办的一场活动时曾给出了一些暗示。

当被问道苹果打算怎样实现服务业务翻番的目标时，马艾斯特利答道：“我们还不知道具体怎样实现这个目标，不过我们看到很多趋势对我们都非常有利，而且我们还会继续推进所有这些方面。”

马艾斯特利还表示，苹果之所以要将这个内部目标公布于众，就是要向投资者“传递一个信息”，强调服务业务对于苹果公司的重要性。不过要想实现一个大目标，如果“信息”传递得太快，战略战术没有跟上，将有可能十分危险。比如IBM公司2010年曾经宣称，要在五年内将公司的每股收益翻一番，达到20美元。然而直到去年，这个数字也仅仅是12.39美元。

苹果的服务业务要想大幅增长，不靠收购是不太可能的。目前为止，苹果在服务业务上最主要的发力就是投资了几部新的电视节目，比如知名节目主持人詹姆斯•柯登主持的喜剧节目《拼车卡拉OK》，以及一部最新的商业真人秀《APP星球》。今年春天，这些节目将在苹果音乐数字流媒体服务中独家上线。预计不久苹果还将投资更多类似的节目。

苹果音乐部门的负责人吉米•艾欧文最近对《纽约时报》表示：“我们有很多项目在做，这就是苹果音乐的发展方向。苹果音乐将提供视频以及其他一些我现在还不能说的东西，我们将大力发展这方面。”

这种缓慢打造原创内容的方式如何能弥补那130亿美元的缺口？反正现在很难看到答案。视频网站Netflix和亚马逊每年也在原创内容上投资好几十个亿美元，而且它们从几年前开始就这样做了。

最近，苹果高级副总裁埃迪•库伊在南加州参加了一场科技峰会。会上，负责苹果整个服务业务的库伊被反复问到关于苹果是否会进行收购的问题，或许是为了平息关于收购的猜测，他表示：

“如果我们想做的是其他所有人都在做的事，那么你可能是对的，我们还不如收购一家公司去做。但那并不是我们想要做的。”库伊针对收购猜测的首次回应也引起了媒体的广泛报道。

即便在苹果的高管团队中，库伊也是一位说话十分圆滑的人。不过随着收购的问题被人反复提起，库伊的回答也越来越模棱两可，甚至或许还透露出了一丝沮丧。

“大家都希望我这站在这里说：‘我们要做跟Netflix一样的事了，而且我们的规模也会跟他们一样大’……诸如此类的话。但是关于这个话题，四年以后，我也不知道我们会进展到哪一步……以及它的增长速度有多快。情况朝哪个方向发展还有待观察。”

当有人问苹果对视频业务的预期投资回报率是多少时，库伊的回答可能也没有让投资者产生更多的信心：“我们并不是从经济和数学的角度看这个问题的。”

潜在目标

蒂姆•库克是在1月31日的收益电话会上公布服务业务翻番这个目标的。库克的这一声明立刻引起了关于苹果是否会在媒体和娱乐方面进行大笔收购的推测。库克表示，苹果会考虑收购任何规模的公司——虽然以前苹果历来只会进行规模相对较小的收购交易。库克还提到了公司最近投资的一些原创视频节目。

“显然我们已经开始试水这个领域了，我们正在学习很多关于原创内容业务的知识，并且正在考虑以什么方式进入这个领域。”库克还表示，通过头两个视频节目，“我们正在学习经验，而且我们会从此走得更远。”

坐拥600亿市值的视频网站Netflix是一个大家谈论得比较多的潜在收购选项，只不过这家公司实在太贵。然而如此大规模的交易也不是没有先例的。苹果会不会像AT&T斥资1090亿美元收购时代华纳那样，一口气买下一个CBS或者沃尔特迪士尼这样的娱乐巨头，现在还不好说。不过苹果多年来在海外已经囤积了2000多亿美元的现金，通过可能的税改举措，这笔钱还是很有可能能够用于收购的。

经过分析师们总结，除了以上媒体巨头之外，苹果其他可能收购的对象还包括动视暴雪这种视频游戏制造商，以及热门网络支付服务贝宝等。

不过考虑到最近的各种杂音，要真正判明苹果的下一步动作，可能还需要一段时间。（财富中文网）

译者：朴成奎

Apple's share price hit an all-time high recently, giving the company a stock market value of $700 billion, as expectations build that the next iPhone could be a blockbuster hit.

But to keep pushing the stock price higher, Apple is trying to convince investors it has a few more tricks up its sleeve than just a super cool 10th anniversary edition of the iconic smartphone. As part of the effort, Apple executives last month pledged to double the size of their $24 billion-a-year services business in four years.

That has puzzled some analysts because growth in services revenue—which includes Apple's cut on everything from songs and movies bought at the iTunes Store to apps and Apple Music subscriptions—has slowed. For the holiday quarter last year, services revenue increased 18%, down from a 26% increase at the end of 2015. And analysts were expecting about 14% annual growth over the next few years, according to at Simona Jankowski at Goldman Sachs.

Toni Sacconaghi, a longtime Apple analyst, last week tried to estimate how Apple could find the additional $24 billion of annual services revenue in just four years—almost triple the sales of Netflix or about equal to the sales of Qualcomm, Halliburton, or McDonald's.

Is Apple so gargantuan now that it can generate new business exceeding the Big Mac in just four years? Assuming even a healthy 27% increase Apple's installed base—the total number of people using iPhones and iPads—and projecting that each customer will also increase their individual spending by 20% over the four years, Apple would be $13 billion short, the Bernstein analyst calculated. UBS analyst Steve Milunovich was more generous to Apple, but pegged the shortfall at $5 billion to $8 billion.

To Sacconaghi, Milunovich, and many others on Wall Street, the gap is a strong sign that Apple is planning for what investors call "inorganic" growth, or in simpler terms, a major acquisition to meet the goal.

Mixed Messages

Since revealing the target, Apple CEO Tim Cook and other top executives have been all over the map in discussing their strategy. The company never reveals future products, and it would be foolish to name M&A targets before negotiating a deal. But even with those limits, the message has been a bit messy.

It could be that Apple had mapped out multiple paths, with acquisitions needed only if optimistic hopes for in-house growth fall short. That sounded like the takeaway from CFO Luca Maestri, as he offered some new hints recently at a Goldman Sachs conference in San Francisco.

"We don't know exactly how we're going to get there," he said when asked about the doubling goal. "Although, we see a lot of trends that are very positive for us, and we will continue to push on all these fronts."

Apple made the internal goal public to "send a message" to investors about the importance of the services business to the company, he added. That can be a dangerous game if the message gets ahead of the strategy and tactics for achieving a big goal, as IBM, for example, discovered after loudly declaring in 2010 it would double earnings per share to $20 in five years. The figure reached just $12.39 last year.

And it's not like Apple is off to a big start without making an acquisition. So far, its major push is financing a couple of new TV shows. New episodes of TV host James Corden's comedy skit Carpool Karaoke and a new reality business show, dubbed Planet of the Apps, will run as exclusives on the Apple Music digital streaming service this spring. Expect more similar efforts soon.

"There are a bunch of projects. We’re in it. This is what Apple Music is going to be," Jimmy Iovine, who oversees the music unit, told the New York Times recently. "Apple Music will have video and other things that I can’t talk about. We're going to be aggressive about it."

How that would slowly building approach would add the missing $13 billion is hard to figure. Netflix and Amazon spend billions of dollars of year on original content and have been at it for years.

Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president overseeing basically the entire services business, tried to tamp down the merger speculation when he was repeatedly asked about the issue in an appearance at the Code Media technology conference in Southern California recently.

"If we wanted to do what everybody else is doing, then you’re right, we might be better off buying somebody or doing that," Cue said in his widely reported first crack at the question. "But that's not what we're trying to do."

But Cue can be a slippery speaker to pin down, even among Apple executives. As the merger question kept coming back up, Cue's answers got increasingly open ended and showed, perhaps, a flash of frustration.

"Everybody wants me to come up here and basically say 'hey, we're going to do the same thing Netflix is and we're going to be just as big' or whatever," Cue said an hour deep into the appearance. "It's, I, four years from now I don't know where we will be in relation to this...how fast it grows and where it goes remains to be seen."

It probably didn't give investors more confidence when Cue later answered a question about Apple's expected return on investment from the video efforts: "We didn't go looking at this from an economic point of view of trying to do the math or that standpoint."

Possible Targets

Cook ignited the speculation of a big media or entertainment acquisition on the January 31 earnings call, when the doubling goal was announced. After noting that Apple would consider acquisitions of any size—even though it has stuck to relatively small deals in the past—Cook mentioned the company's recent efforts to back a few original video shows.

"We are obviously with our toe in the water, we're learning a lot about the original content business, and thinking about ways that we could play in that," Cook said. With the first two video deals, "we're learning from that and we'll go from there," he added.

Netflix, with its $60 billion market cap, has been one widely discussed—if expensive—acquisition option. Copying AT&T's $109 billion Time Warner purchase by going after an entertainment giant like CBS or Walt Disney is hard to fathom, but Apple is expected to get access to the more than $200 billion it has stashed overseas via likely tax reform moves.

Other possibilities analysts have mentioned include service targets outside of big media, like video game maker Activision Blizzard or online payments star PayPal.

Given all the recent chatter, however, it may take a while to sort this one out.