Oh, How The Rich Suffer: After An Historic Stock Drop, What Apple Should Do With The Cash

Quiz time. Quick, what’s the richest company on the planet? If you said Apple, well, close enough. Apple’s wealth of riches are beyond belief.

In just a few short years our favorite Cupertino, CA gadget maker has amassed a truck load of cash, while selling briskly everything it makes (except Macs, it seems), and become the new poster child of beleaguered technology companies. All at the same time. Apparently, all Apple has going for it is cash. Lots of cash.

What should Apple do with all that cash?

Buy The TV And Movie Industry

That pretty much sums up my perspective on what Apple should do with all their gains. Forget about stock repurchase plans or stock dividends. That’s not innovative. That’s not thinking different.

Wall Street and investors have beaten Apple’s stock into a pulp and made the company barely worth three times the cash on hand (most of which is outside the U.S., where it’s safe from congress).

With inflation low, and Apple’s cash flow the envy of the free world, the company sits on cash that could easily burn a hole in Tim Cook’s pocket. Or, burn a hole in the moon.

You know the truth as well as I. Apple’s innovative product pipeline has gone dry. Without Steve Jobs around to provide proper pharmaceuticals to Jon Ive so he can design a new product to soothe the savage beast of Wall Street, Tim Cook has only one choice to truly innovate and disrupt and entire industry that everyone uses even more than a phone, tablet, or computer.

Apple should take the nearly $140-billion in cash by write a check to buy the entire television and movie making industry. Then, put all the world’s content on Apple’s iCloud and serve it to the world using Apple TV.

Forget An Apple Television

There’s just no need for Apple to build an HD TV. Or, a smart TV, or an Apple-branded TV. Or, any TV at all. Nobody makes any money making televisions. TV is all about content. That’s the industry that is ripe for disruption. Google is doing something similar already with YouTube, which creates a new content universe. But that will take decades to work, if at all.

Apple’s stock is dropping faster than Republican cache with voters. It’s time for Tim to act to save the company. Or, at least to save it from becoming beleaguered like Microsoft.

Steve Jobs’ buddy, Henry David Thoreau, put it something like this, ‘Disruption, disruption, disruption.’ What would be more disrupting than to have Apple provide the world’s TV and movie content on demand– only for Apple devices, of course?

Timing could not be better. Microsoft’s Windows 8, Surface tablets, and Windows Phone are failures. It’s the post-PC era. Amazon is losing money on its tablet and media venture. Google is losing money on Android. HTC, Nokia, RIM, are all losing money, so when Apple plugs in content on demand for Mac, iPhone, and iPad only, who stands to win?

Yes, the cable television companies will object. They whine about anything that threatens to take some milk from their cash cow. When Apple buys up all the television and movie content the cable television companies will sue for peace, and become just another purveyor of dumb pipes for Apple. Just like AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint.

Apple can afford to buy television and movie content and make it available on demand. That’s what we want. Come on, Tim. You can do it. Apple can afford it. The world needs it. Think how proud Steve Jobs would be of you when you sign that check.

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