It’s hard to imagine a big company without merger of small enterprises. Modern  technological giants, as well as Apple is not an exception. Apple empire has bought about 80 startups starting from 1988.  And though this number is less than its competitors’ (Google – 199, Microsoft – 182), this is the policy of Apple: it is able to take a risk, if the risk is really justified and the idea is promising enough. That is why we are going to talk about the startups, which have became its part, and their fate.

1. NEXT

20.12.1996 – the date of the historical for Apple, the acquisition of NeXT company, the founder of which was exiled from Apple Steve Jobs. Going through bad times guys from cupertino up a little nest egg around 400 millions dollars. Thus their purchase has existed already for 11 years, during which it managed to survive a failure on the  market of hardware devices and success in the sphere of creation of innovative software.

If to believe in gossip, that time apple had a need in OS update. As a result the development of NeXT – ОС NeXTSTEP – served as the basis for Mac OS X appearance. Also the fact that Steve Jobs has returned to Apple is also significant enough.

2. SIRI, INC.

Before this company has become a cog in the mechanism of Apple, the press informed, that its OS will be spread on phones with OS Android. But these gossip came to an end, when in the end of 2008 it was merged by Apple corporation.The amount of compensation is still kept in secret

In the beginning of Siri looked like an average application on iOS, the aim of which was the performance of voice requests and to give the possibility to dictate the text. But soon Siri was destined to become an essential ingredient of Apple devices.

Nowaday Siri is a personal assistant with a serious number of functions. It’s able to perform mini tasks, to answer questions and give advice. And with help of the machine education this voice assistant is able to learn the user’s tastes and to rely on them in future.

3. P. A. SEMI

The specialization of this company  was related to production and further sale of  microelectronics. And it managed to gain a significant success in this field.  The orders made by US Department of Defense, which P.A. provided with PWRficient 1682М, processors, 4 times more effective than any others existing in the market, proves that. It was supposed that they age going to be used in Apple laptops on the architecture of  PowerPC, still, later on cupertino guys have given up this plan and decided to switch to Intel.

Anyway, in 2008  P. A. Semi has become a part of the Apple family, and the price of this deal was 278 millions of dollars. During the period the company was merged it didn’t have its own production capacity, and its staff consisted only out of 150 employees. Of course, the questions appeared, to which Steve Jobs answered, that the purchase is based, first of all, on his desire to have high skilled engineers in his team.

Only the time has showed the practicability of this step. Soon Apple has started the independent development of the processors for some of its devices. In addition in 2011 the corporation has bought Intrinsity, the company involved in the production chips for Apple as well as for Sumsung. The price of it is 121 millions dollars.

4. LALA

In 2009 cupertino guys has bought Lala.com, the icloud platform, which helped its users to make streams, share music playlists, to download products and to buy them. This service obtained 8 millions downloaded music tracks when it was bought. It’s price was 17 millions dollars.

A year after this purchase iTunes has turned into an icloud service. As a result, the users were offered an option to download music tracks, they have bought, on iOS – devices by logging in the Apple ID. Also, Lala background has served as the basis for iTunes Match.

5. QUATTRO WIRELESS

The beginning of 2010 was marked by the purchase of Quattro Wireless for Apple, The company, which specialized on mobile ads, was merged by Apple for 275 millions dollars. In six months after its event the advertising platform iAD was produced, created on the Quattro Wireless basis. Though, it existed for a short period of time: in the middle of 2016 it was closed.

(to be continued)