Rumors of Possible Merger Between Apple and Disney Surface Once Again

It's a possibility that has long been considered by business insiders, but one that never seemed likely to happen: the world's largest tech company - Apple, joining hands with the world's second-largest entertainment company - Disney. The move has always seemed like a long shot, even after Disney managed to buy the entertainment assets of Twenty-First Century Fox back in 2019, but now, there's new speculation that a merger could be on the cards.



Speculation of a merger has been around for quite some time. Steve Jobs already had ties to Pixar after he purchased the computer animation company from George Lucas and Lucasfilm in 1986, and following Bob Iger's shrewd decision to fully acquire the animation giant during a time when Disney's in-house animated films were lagging in quality, an unlikely friendship was formed between two titans of industry. Jobs became one of Disney's biggest investors as a result of the acquisition as the company entered a period of rapid expansion. Iger himself has openly written about the possibility - when he lamented his friend's passing in his book The Ride of a Lifetime, he fueled this idea by noting that he believed that he and Jobs would've combined their companies had his life not been cut short by pancreatic cancer. Despite this framing as being a lost dream, rumors still persisted that Disney and Apple could merge.



The Hollywood Reporter is the latest publication to indicate the idea of traction between such an enormous merger of the $2.8T Apple absorbing the $158B Disney (as a wise man once put it - there's always a bigger fish). One insider suggested that while Apple might not be interested in buying Disney as it currently exists, it may be interested in buying a slimmer Disney that divests certain assets. Iger has recently indicated that some of Disney's television channels may not be necessary to keep as they put more efforts on the television side of things into direct-to-consumer offerings (with ABC and Freeform being noted as some of several networks to sell for potentially tens of billions of dollars), and he has also called into question the possibility of keeping something like Hulu, which has long been expected to fold into Disney Plus if and when Disney purchases the remaining shares of the streaming service (which would add more to Disney's debt at a time when they are aiming to reduce spending). On the note of streaming, Apple and Disney both have services of their own - Disney has a substantially larger audience, but Apple has more prestige originals. Combining would help consolidate the number of streaming services on the market (something that seems inevitable with the streaming bubble bursting and everyone now looking for ways to reduce extensive overspending), provide Disney+ with must-see originals, and give Apple's original programming a much larger audience.







Of course, there are skeptics to the idea. Apple has never done such a major acquisition before, and such a merger would involve massive regulatory headaches to navigate and pass. Apple would have to adapt to a completely different set of business models, such as television networks and theme parks, that they might not be interested in. Plus, in the event that Apple did decide that they wanted to acquire a company, then it might instead set its sights on a comparatively smaller studio like Lionsgate or Paramount. And on Disney's side, there are questions of whether or not Iger wants his legacy to be 'The Man Who Sold the (Disney) World' after building his reputation on being the man who took Disney to new heights with major acquisitions, only for his own company to become an acquisition target itself. Iger's contract runs until the end of 2026, meaning that he would potentially have ample time to oversee such a sale in the event that it is anything more than a Wall Street flight of fancy, but it's potentially more likely that the board hired him to do course-correction for the company instead of prime it for a sale. And even if the company is sold, it would still have to navigate a tough regulatory landscape under conditions less favorable than the ones that allowed Disney to pick up most of Fox's entertainment assets - though it's also possible that, due to there being less of an overlap between Apple's assets and Disney's, it may be able to skirt by with enough divestment.



As it stands, Bob Iger has plenty of time to mull over the company's future and what adjustments it might make to accommodate for the challenges for the twenty-first century, as he still has another three years and four months left on his contract. Whether or not Disney remains an island in an industry likely to be acquired in a series of major tech giant acquisitions, or if it becomes a definitive purchase of one of those larger tech companies, remains to be seen.



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