Apple eyeing Hulu acquisition, insiders say Apple is in talks to acquire video-streaming and subscription service Hulu, according to sources speaking with both Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal The rumor is in no way far-fetched. Earlier this month, Robert Iger, CEO of Walt Disney, one of Hulu's owners, confirmed that Disney and the other owners – News Corporation, …
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All the Hulu ads would become Mac and iPhony ads....and who needs that?.
I'm also sure that if they ended up with it,..you'd see the end of support for other devices,..and then free support for Apple trash....and then a lawsuit(monopoly).
At least Google won't REEEM the world with it.
Remember that 'Big Brother' add that crapple wore on its sleeve letting them pose as the defenders of democracy, choice etc.
Fast forward to now and crapple is doing everything it can to become Big Brother. With crapple you have choice, choice of which crapple product service will drain your bank balance the fastest.
As others have said, there's no need for Apple to do this, they have the licenses to the content already, it's just in a different delivery format. It's not Apple's business to stream ad-supported media like Hulu as there are no gigantic 30-40% profit margins in that model that Apple looks at.
What absolutely would make sense and become an absolute powerhouse to be reckoned with is a combined Hulu+Spotify. Hulu needs Spotify's European customer base and expertise and distribution mechanism, both services are complementary to each other, both are freemium services, and both have the blessings and indeed seen as the darlings of the content owners.
That would also take both services to the next level and compete with the AGA conglomerate (Apple, Google, Amazon).
Why would they need a divi from the shares?
Have you seen the increase in value over the last 2 years? ... Makes for a portfolio busting return.
http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=AAPL#symbol=aapl;range=5y;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=;
I still wouldn't buy their shyte, but their shares mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Finance theory states that dividends and capital gains are a zero sum game, so if a company issues dividends then the share price decreases in line with the amount of dividends. Therefore with Apple and the other companies that don't pay dividends, if you want to get cash you need to sell some of your shares (that have appreciated more in value because they haven't had a divi).
Of course some companies do this because the management get rewarded with Share Options determined by the share price, so it's not in the management's interest to issue dividends and drive the share price down.
You are neglecting the fact that investors can use the dividends to purchase assets that have a higher return than the cash and long term bonds that Apple currently holds. Currently a holding of AAPL stock is effectively a portfolio of stock in AAPLs business and stock in a cash/bond fund. The returns on the former are stellar, the returns on the latter are so so.
So by issuing a dividend and allowing investors to invest that cash into higher yielding instruments (such as AAPL stock itself) higher investor returns are indeed possible, even though the act of issuing a dividend does not create value ( in fact it's not zero sum, because due to taxation issuing a dividend actually reduces value in the US).
If a particular company is not likely to grow rapidly and find high-return uses for all that capital, then a dollar stuck inside the company is worth less than a dollar in the hands of shareholders who could invest it elsewhere. So companies that don't pay dividends, hoard lots of cash, and don't do a good job investing that cash on behalf of shareholders, are probably going to be subjected to a discount by the market in valuing that cash hoard on their balance sheet. So paying dividends is not necessarily going to result in a dollar-for-dollar reduction in a company's share value - it really depends on the company.
Didn't Apple already buy a streaming company a few years back? I'm sure they did, and people where saying it was going to be the foundations of a decent streaming service from Apple, which I am yet to see. Maybe I was dreaming.
Anywho I live in England so it doesn't matter who owns HULU because, 'We're sorry, currently our video library can only be streamed within the United States..."
I seem to remember that Apple required credit card information for even the "free" content on iTunes, then lost the credit card information.
I was affected by this and I don't intend to give Apple any more information than I have to. This could mean the end of Hulu as anything useful for the advertisers. They may be buying into ill will.
I'd be surprised if the antitrust authorities were to let this one go through. iTunes may not have streaming now but it could easily move into that market on its own rather than taking a buying Hulu. You'd think the best outcome for consumers would be for Hulu to go public as an independent company, armed with nice contracts from its content providers to give it a chance against Netflix, Amazon and iTunes.
HTML 5 isn't going to work for Hulu because it doesn't specify support for streaming video protocols and trying to run a service like Hulu using http progressive downloads just isn't going to work. I also suspect that DRM isn't possible with HTML5. That rules out HTML 5 for the time being, so one way or the other, Apple are still going to be using a browser plugin or extension of some kind to deliver this service, unless they dump the web interface and push everything into iTunes.
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