Apple considers acquiring Time Warner Valuations of up to $60 billion

Negotiations on Apple's acquisition of Time Warner are still in the preliminary stages, but Apple does have a strong interest in purchasing TV content and competing in the TV market.

On May 27, according to the Financial Times, Apple was considering acquiring Time Warner. Eddy Cue, an executive who oversees the iTunes store, Apple Music and iCloud businesses, made a takeover proposal to Olaf Olafsson, Time Warner's head of corporate strategy, at a meeting late last year.

However, the discussion is only at a preliminary stage, and Apple CEO Cook and Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes are not involved.

Founded in 1990, Time Warner is a multinational media company in the United States headquartered in New York. Its business territory is huge and its assets are high-quality: including Time Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Fortune Magazine, Life Magazine, Turner Television Network, CNN, HBO, which recently produced "Game of Thrones","Silicon Valley" and "Vice President", DC Comics Company, Warner Bros., Hollywood's largest film and television producer, etc.

The Financial Times analyzed that Time Warner is a suitable acquisition target for Apple. It and Disney are one of the few media companies that do not have a dual-class equity structure or family ownership. Others such as Comcast, 21st Century Fox, Colombia, Viacom, etc. are controlled by their founders and their families, making acquisitions extremely difficult.

However, Time Warner's valuation reaches US$60 billion, which is still acceptable to Apple. According to the latest financial report data, as of the end of 2015, Apple had as much as US$216 billion in cash, far ahead of all listed non-financial companies in the United States and almost twice that of Microsoft, which ranks second. Even a wholly-owned acquisition is not too difficult.

Apple and Time Warner have also worked together. Last year, HBO launched an independent streaming App: HBO Now, which has an exclusive window on Apple TV.

In recent years, Apple has increased the layout of content to match its own hardware products. A source told the Financial Times that Apple plans to "spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year" on content, and perhaps the offer is just the beginning.

Not long ago, Apple commissioned a video series titled "app economy" for its streaming service Apple Music and a scripted series starring and produced by hip-hop star Dr Dre.

In November 2015, Apple announced a cooperation with the Dutch VR platform Vrse on VR content. For this cooperation, they also created a virtual reality music video called Song For Someone specifically for the U2 band. This collaboration is also known as "The Experience Bus", and fans of U2 can experience the atmosphere of a live concert by wearing VR headsets and Beats headphones.

On Apple Music, Apple has also held copyright negotiations with more than a dozen singers and bands, including the British band Florence And the Machine and the American singer Swift.

Apple has also acquired Musicmetric, a UK-based music data analysis startup that may help track which artists and music are the most popular through analytics. For Apple, acquiring Semetric is a new attempt to consolidate its leadership in the digital music market.

But none of these can be compared to the scale of Apple's acquisition of Time Warner.

Just two years ago, Time Warner received a merger offer from 21st Century Fox. On the day the merger was proposed, 21st Century Fox made an offer (traded in cash and stock) of approximately $86 a share, which Time Warner refused to trade.

Affected by Apple's acquisition news, Time Warner rose 1.52% on the 26th.

Editor: yvonne