Apple looking at cars, medical devices for growth: report

February 25, 2014 Leave a comment

Apple looking at cars, medical devices for growth: report

11:29am EST

(Reuters) – Apple Inc is looking at cars and medical devices to diversify its sources of revenue as growth from iPhones and iPads slow, according to a San Francisco Chronicle report.

Apple’s head of mergers and acquisitions, Adrian Perica, met with Tesla Motors Inc founder Elon Musk at the company’s headquarters last year around the same time analysts suggested that Apple acquire the Model S electric car maker, the newspaper reported on Sunday, citing a source.

The company is also exploring medical devices and sensors that can help predict heart attacks by studying sound blood makes at it flows through arteries.

The company’s senior vice president of operations, Jeff Williams, has met with U.S. Food and Drug Administration chief Dr. Margaret Hamburg and Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, who oversees the agency’s approval for medical devices, to discuss “mobile medical applications,” the paper reported, citing FDA records.

Apple could not be reached for comment.

Rival Google Inc recently bought thermostat maker Nest Labs for $3.2 billion, robot maker Boston Dynamic and artificial intelligence startup DeepMind Technologies Ltd. The company has also been working on projects including Google Glass and self-driving cars.

Investors hope that Apple, which last came out with a new device – the iPad – in 2010, has something up its sleeve for 2014. Speculation currently revolves around a smartwatch or even a long-rumored TV product.

Apple is expected to launch the iPhone 6, a mid-range smartphone, and may also launch wearable devices such as iWatch, in the second half of the year.

Others say Apple can use its huge iPhone and iTunes base to get into mobile payments or advertising.

Apple reported lower-than-expected iPhone sales for the holiday shopping quarter and gave a weaker-than-expected revenue forecast. The company has been ceding ground to Samsung Electronics Co and other rivals in China, its No. 2 market.

 

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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