Apple's top acquisitions

Key Takeaways

Apple has acquired over 100 companies, with many remaining undisclosed.
Notable acquisitions include Fleetsmith, Dark Sky, and Shazam.
Apple’s largest acquisition was Beats Electronics for $3 billion, followed by Intel’s smartphone modem business for $1 billion.

Apple is known for acquiring more than 100 companies. However, it’s undoubtedly a substantial underreport, given that Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, once said the iPhone maker acquires a new company every two-to-three weeks on average, having acquired 20 to 25 companies in a single six-month period alone. The vast majority of Apple’s acquisitions happen without public knowledge unless unveiled by the media, as the company wants to keep the technologies it’s working with secret and limit skepticism of integrations with current or future products.

I considered numerous acquisitions for this list but opted not to include some as there was no way to say with certainty that particular acquisitions led to specific technologies or products. At least 11 companies can be attributed to the development and evolution of Siri, and three more for Face ID. Undoubtedly, there are many more fascinating acquisitions Apple has conducted that are worth exploring. Still, here are 11 of the most interesting.

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1 Fleetsmith

A mobile device management company bought in 2020 for an undisclosed amount

Fleetsmith / Pocket-lint

For most of Apple’s existence, it has left device management to third parties like Jamf, Kandji, and Moysle. However, the allure of potential service revenue may have led Apple to buy Fleetsmith. Apple used its acquisition of Fleetsmith to create Apple Business Essentials, its own mobile device management service allowing for basic settings enforcement and app deployment.

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2 Dark Sky

A hyper-local weather forecasting app bought in 2020 for an undisclosed amount

Apple / Pocket-lint

The Apple Weather app has always been a little meh, to say the least. So, when reports came out that Apple was acquiring the popular weather app Dark Sky, there were a lot of mixed feelings.

While many users were excited about the prospects of Apple’s own weather app improving, others were just as upset about losing their incredibly accurate one. After rebranding Dark Sky to Dark Sky by Apple, the service was eventually discontinued. In its place, developers could gain access to WeatherKit, a service providing affordable weather data. Four years on, Apple Weather has never seemed quite as good as Dark Sky.

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3 Intel’s smartphone modem business

An entire cellular connectivity modems division bought in 2019 for $1 billion

Intel

Apple acquired Intel’s fledgling smartphone modem business in an attempt to reduce reliance on its current 5G modem provider, Qualcomm. Apple and Qualcomm have previously fought in court over excessive royalty fees. Despite gaining 2,200 intel employees, 17,000 wireless technology patents, and unknown amounts of intellectual property, Apple still has yet to create a modem replacement equivalent to Qualcomm despite analyst expectations the company could do so within three years.

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4 Shazam

A music identification app bought in 2018 for $400 million

Shazam

When Apple purchased the song identification app Shazam, there wasn’t any clear indication of what the company would do with it. Six years later, Shazam still operates as a subsidiary of Apple and has been made ad-free for all users. Despite the acquisition, Shazam still supports Android devices and is further integrated into Apple’s operating systems for quicker sound recognition.

5 Texture

A digital magazine subscription service bought in 2018 for $485 million

Apple

Texture was a digital magazine subscription service offering access to 200+ magazines for $10 per month. Apple shut down Texture in mid-2018 to transfer magazine companies and subscribers to what would be Apple’s own digital magazine service, Apple News+, which came out in 2019.

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6 Beddit

A sleep-tracking technology company was bought in 2017 for an undisclosed amount

Beddit / Pocket-lint

The discovery of Apple acquiring the Finnish sleep-tracking hardware company Beddit came from a quiet privacy policy update to Beddit users stating that the company had been bought by Apple and data would be governed by its privacy policy.

At the time of the acquisition, there was a lot of hope that Beddit’s technology would be used to make the Apple Watch an incredible sleep tracker. Despite sleep tracking being added to the Apple Watch with watchOS 7, it’s still pretty rudimentary and a far way off from the data Beddit’s trackers could provide.

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7 Primephonic

A classical music streaming service bought in 2017 for an undisclosed amount

Primphonic

Classical music service Primephonic was bought under the belief it’d be used to improve Apple Music’s classical music experience. Classical music listeners expect a different experience and information set than other music genres, so it made sense that Apple wanted to improve that experience to capture more users.

Despite coming out with Apple Music Classical, a dedicated classical music streaming app for Apple Music subscribers in 2023, the California tech giant shut down Primephonic two years earlier in 2021, leaving an awkward gap for classical music listeners.

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8 Workflow

An automation app for iOS bought in 2017 for an undisclosed amount

Apple

Workflow was a popular automation app that allowed users to automate a series of tasks with a single tap. In 2018, Workflow would eventually become Siri Shortcuts.

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9 Beats Electronics

An audio technology company bought in 2014 for $3 billion

Beats / Pocket-lint

Unlike other tech giants that buy companies for tens of billions of dollars, like Microsoft with LinkedIn and Activision Blizzard, Beats remains Apple’s largest-ever acquisition. The music lifestyle brand founded by famous rapper Dr. Dre and record executive Jimmy Iovine in 2006 is best known for its array of base-heavy headphones, earphones, and speakers.

Unlike most acquisitions made by Apple, Beats continues to operate as a subsidiary of Apple rather than being fully engulfed by the iPhone maker. Rumors say that Apple absorbed the best music engineering talent into its own R&D teams while leaving the Beats brand to create alternative headphone and earphone products built on top of AirPod hardware and engineering. It’s expected that Beats continues to be a very lucrative business for Apple, more than paying for its initial acquisition price.

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10 AuthenTec

A fingerprint recognition and biometric security company bought in 2012 for $356 million

Apple / Pocket-lint

AuthenTec was a mobile security company known for its biometric security and fingerprint sensor technology. Apple bought AuthenTec to use its licenses and patent portfolio to create Touch ID, which would be unveiled with the iPhone 5S.

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11 NeXT

A computer hardware and software company bought in 1996 for $400 million

NeXT / Pocket-lint

NeXT always had and likely always will be Apple’s most significant acquisition. While NeXT technology certainly played an important role in the Mac’s future success, it was Steve Jobs’ return to Apple that reshaped the company’s fortunes.

Jobs created NeXT in 1985 after leaving Apple to create cutting-edge computer hardware and software. Apple bought NeXT 14 years later and used the NeXTSTEP operating system as the foundation for Mac OS X.