<story><title>Steve, Please Buy Us A Carrier</title><url>http://www.mondaynote.com/2011/08/14/steve-please-buy-us-a-carrier/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Timothee</author><text>To be noted: this is written by Jean-Louis Gassée, former Apple executive and founder of Be Incorporated, which was at some point very close to be bought by Apple before Apple bought NeXT to get the foundation of what is now Mac OS X. (which also brought Steve Jobs back to Apple…)&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m bringing this up not to say that this is insider&apos;s information or that it is thus more likely to happen, but just because in this case, the author is more significant than some rambling from a random blogger. That theme is not new, so it&apos;s interesting that &lt;i&gt;he&lt;/i&gt; would bring it up.&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Louis_Gass%C3%A9e&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Louis_Gass%C3%A9e&lt;/a&gt;)</text></comment>
<story><title>Steve, Please Buy Us A Carrier</title><url>http://www.mondaynote.com/2011/08/14/steve-please-buy-us-a-carrier/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>gzp</author><text>Apple would be spending half its cash pile to acquire a domestic company.&lt;p&gt;Nearly two-thirds (62%) of the company&apos;s sales are international [1]; furthermore, I would guess that much of the company&apos;s growth is in international markets, especially in Asia.&lt;p&gt;Unless Apple is seeking to improve its operational expertise in running carriers in order to buy up carriers throughout the world, this acquisition would be a very curious one.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/07/19Apple-Reports-Third-Quarter-Results.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/07/19Apple-Reports-Thir...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>