Philip Elmer-DeWitt, writing for Fortune:
Last quarter, Apple finally made a major acquisition. And what did it buy?
It bought Apple.
By my calculation, the company spent $16 billion last quarter ($4 billion in cash, $12 billion through the so-called accelerated share repurchase program) to purchase 36 million of its own shares at an average price of just over $444.
For that amount, Apple could have bought three Nokias or three BlackBerrys…
Maybe Apple will pull a Dell and go private at some point?