Revisiting Old Apple Articles

If you follow Apple news, you'll know one of the lamest bit of news going around is the speculation about what Apple should do with the $15 billion in cash it has. Some big names came up with insanely dumb ideas like buying Facebook or Nintendo. This story has been rehashed several times this year. An old article from Business Week probably delivers the best answer: use it to secure the supply chain for components like NAND flash memory.

"Apple's flash purchases are generally done in advance. Its 10K says it paid $1.25 billion up front for NAND supplies in 2006, and had used up $208 million worth of that during the fiscal year. And if you dig further through the 10K you find that $417 million worth of flash purchases are counted as part of "other assets" line item on the balance sheet, which totals $3.8 billion.

In a pinch, it can use its ability to pay large amounts of cash quickly in negotiating supply agreements on any important commodity component that runs the risk of running short: DRAM memory, LCD or touch screens, etc."