decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more...
decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.


You won't find me on Facebook


Donate

Donate Paypal


No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.


What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments


Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
Recall that Apple wanted Samsung to commit | 234 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Apple bailed out Sharp to the tune of $2bn last quarter: analyst
Authored by: JimDiGriz on Thursday, November 08 2012 @ 06:35 AM EST
http://www.zdnet.com/apple-bailed-out-sharp-to-the-tune-of-2bn-last-quarter-anal yst-7000007092/

Television and display maker Sharp is in serious trouble, with crushed profits and huge losses hanging around the company's neck like a lead weight. But one analyst suggests that Apple used its massive cash pile to make sure the company survived to deliver parts for the new iPhone 5.

Apple and Sharp have been thrown together thanks to the ongoing legal feud between Apple and Samsung. Apple, wanting to lessen its reliance on Samsung, turned to Sharp for displays for its new iPhone. But huge problems at the company had put the delivery of these screens in jeopardy.

Enter Apple and its massive $100 billion plus cash pile.

Asymco analyst Horace Dediu suggests that Apple may just have pushed over $2 billion to Sharp during the last quarter to ensure that the supplier survived. Digging through the financial data, Dediu points to expenditures at Apple that were over $2.3 billion higher than forecast. Dediu also found that Apple paid for some of its acquisitions "through uncharacteristic or unorthodox means."

Apple put the spending down to "product tooling, manufacturing process equipment, and infrastructure," but Dediu's theory is that at least some of that money went to Sharp.

He noted:

Circumstantial evidence points to the asset being production equipment (or even a whole plant) previously owned by Sharp," Dediu said. "Sharp is a key supplier of screens to Apple but is also in financial distress. Sharp has also been the object of an intended investment by Foxconn [Hon Hai]. That deal fell through as Sharp's finances deteriorated. My guess is that these attempts to shore up Sharp are directed by Apple to ensure both continuity of supply and a balanced supplier base (offsetting Samsung, another supplier).

Dediu points out that if Sharp had entered into bankruptcy, it's quite possible that its production plants could be grabbed by creditors and shut down, irrespective of any deal with Apple. If this had happened it could have resulted in the iPhone 5 being delayed, something Apple would have wanted to avoid at all costs.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Recall that Apple wanted Samsung to commit
Authored by: SpaceLifeForm on Thursday, November 08 2012 @ 02:22 PM EST
Apple tried to convince Samsung to dedicate a bunch
of fab production dedicated to Apple.

Samsung smartly did not commit especially when
you consider that Apple sales are not cutting it.

This should not imply that Samsung should abandon
building a plant in the US, it just could mean that
Samsung is not going to dedicate production to Apple.

Which would explain why Apple wants Sharp to help.


---

You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details )