Tim Cook: Apple made 15 strategic acquisitions in fiscal 2013

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In what turned out to be a rather interesting earnings call earlier today, Tim Cook talked about a wide range of topics including ‘new product categories‘ and Apple’s thinking behind the iPhone 5c. And he also touched on acquisitions.

In what seemed like a passing comment, Cook noted on today’s call that Apple has completed a total of 15 strategic acquisitions during the course of fiscal 2013. That equates to roughly one every 3-4 weeks, a new high for the company…

We’ve covered a number of these acquisitions on iDB—at least the ones that were known publicly— which included a handful of mapping companies, and various other technology startups. Here are the buyouts of 2013 we knew about:

  • WiFiSLAM – The two-year-old startup has developed ways for mobile apps to detect a phone user’s location in a building using Wi-Fi signals.
  • Embark – A small Silicon Valley upstart responsible for nearly a dozen Android and iOS transit apps. Has data on many major US city transit systems including New York, San Francisco and Chicago.
  • HopStop – Startup firm behind a popular free iPhone and Android transit app that featured detailed subway, bus, train, taxi, walking and biking directions.
  • Locationary – A Canadian startup that uses crowdsourcing and a federated data exchange platform called Saturn to collect, merge and continuously verify a massive database of information on local businesses around the world, solving one of location’s biggest problems: out-of-date information.
  • AlgoTrim – Created software that compresses images for quicker display on mobile devices and technology for more efficient and battery-friendly image processing and editing.
  • Cue – Makers of a personal assistant app of the same name that pulled together Gmail, Google Calendar, Facebook and other accounts, and used ‘sophisticated algorithms’ to provide a personalized overview of daily events/activities.
  • Passif Semiconductor – A privately held company that specializes in developing communication chips that use very little power, including low-power Bluetooth LE chips for health-monitoring and fitness devices.
  • Matcha.tv – A fairly popular recommendation service that aggregated content from a number of streaming services including Netflix, iTunes, Hulu and Amazon Prime.

Not only is it kind of cool to see all of these acquisitions together in one place, but it kind of makes you wonder what the other 7 companies are that Apple purchased this year. Were they big firms or small firms? How much did it spend?