A handful of cash-rich companies are consolidating power in the technology industry, using their wealth to expand into new businesses and making it harder for small and midsize competitors to break through. Why the industry is evolving this way is rooted in balance sheets. Over the past two years, Apple Inc., Oracle Corp., Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and six other large tech companies have generated $ 68.5 billion in new cash, compared with just $13.5 billion for the other 65 tech companies in the S & P 500 Index combined, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data provided by Capital IQ.
The rich few are funding investments at a time when many others have retrenched. Over the past year, Oracle paid $ 7.4 billion to get into the hardware business by acquiring Sun Microsystems, and Dell Inc. bought Perot Systems to add technology services. Cisco Systems Inc. spent more than $ 7 billion to acquire six companies. Google, meanwhile, has tapped its savings to fund moves into computer operating systems and mobile phones. Microsoft has financed its money-losing quest to take on Google in search with its cash. And Apple has used its reserves to develop the iPad and take aim at Google recently by acquiring a mobile-advertising company. Because of their massive cash accumulation, these companies can afford to take risks that smaller companies can’t at a time when the economy remains fragile. The result is a bifurcated (一分为二的) tech landscape, says Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management.
The repercussions from the cash discrepancy are being felt throughout the industry. Some midsize tech companies are giving up trying to compete with their larger rivals. Others are gearing up to make their own acquisitions so as not to be left behind. For example, online-software maker Salesforce. corn Inc. nearly doubled its cash reserves in January by taking on $ 575 million in debt that it says it will use in part for future expansion and acquisitions. Other midsize tech companies, such as Ciena Corp., have recently scooped up smaller rivals to bulk up.
From the end of 2007 to the end of 2009, the 10 richest tech companies increased their cash levels by 48% to $ 210 billion. The other 65 tech companies listed in the S & P 500 upped their cash only 13% in the same period, to $118 billion. The upshot: The gap between the groups stood at a record. The gap would be even larger, except an accounting change caused Apple to designate about $10 billion of its holdings as long-term investments.
To cope with the difficulty, some midsize companies choose to give up competing, others decide to ______.
