Friday’s Apple Rumors: Apple & Barnes & Noble

by Anthony John Agnello | July 29, 2011 10:15 am

Here are your Apple rumors and news items for Friday:

Apple & Barnes  & Noble: Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL[1]) will likely face even more competition with Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN[2]) if rumors of a new Kindle tablet prove true. But Apple may already have a solution: buying Amazon’s most significant retail competitor. A Thursday rumor at BGR[3], said that Apple is considering acquiring Barnes & Noble (NYSE:BKS[4]) for between $1 and $1.5 billion. The acquisition is sound. In addition to helping the company to better take on Amazon, Barnes & Noble would allow Apple to rapidly expand its retail operation, cut into the e-reader market by taking over the Nook business, and fix its nonstarting iBookstore digital storefront. The money is there too: With $76 billion in cash laying around, Apple’s potential purchase would hardly break the bank.

iPhone 5 vs. Mango: According to IDC, Apple surpassed Nokia (NYSE:NOK[5]) as the world’s leading smartphone manufacturer in the second quarter. Now the two companies are gearing up for a head-to-head battle to determine which company holds the top spot. According to DigiTimes[6], Nokia will release its first phone using Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT[7]) Windows Phone 7 operating system in October. The debut will come just weeks after the suspected release of Apple’s newest iPhone. A number of manufacturers, including Samsung, HTC, and LG, will also release phones that use the latest version of the Windows platform, codenamed Mango.

Google Picks Up Some IBM: Google (NASDAQ:GOOG[8]) has made a strong move to acquire technology patents. Bloomberg (via Apple Insider[9]) has reported that Google purchased a number of patents from IBM (NYSE:IBM[10]) at the beginning of July, leaving competitors like Apple open to litigation for infringement. Apple and Google were among the companies pitted in a bidding war to acquire a series of Nortel patents in June that ended with the intellectual property going to both companies for a combined $4.5 billion.

As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here. Follow him on Twitter at @ajohnagnello[11] and become a fan of InvestorPlace on Facebook.[12]

 

 

Endnotes:

  1. AAPL: http://studio-5.financialcontent.com/investplace/quote?Symbol=AAPL
  2. AMZN: http://studio-5.financialcontent.com/investplace/quote?Symbol=AMZN
  3. BGR: http://www.bgr.com/2011/07/28/does-apple-have-any-interest-in-buying-barnes-noble/
  4. BKS: http://studio-5.financialcontent.com/investplace/quote?Symbol=BKS
  5. NOK: http://studio-5.financialcontent.com/investplace/quote?Symbol=NOK
  6. DigiTimes: http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20110728PD216.html
  7. MSFT: http://studio-5.financialcontent.com/investplace/quote?Symbol=MSFT
  8. GOOG: http://studio-5.financialcontent.com/investplace/quote?Symbol=GOOG
  9. Apple Insider: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/07/29/google_purchases_ibm_inventions_as_patent_arms_race_looms.html
  10. IBM: http://studio-5.financialcontent.com/investplace/quote?Symbol=IBM
  11. @ajohnagnello: http://twitter.com/#%21/ajohnagnello
  12. InvestorPlace on Facebook.: http://www.facebook.com/pages/InvestorPlace/178906405484848

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