Apple has changed the world and people's traditional experiences. How did it achieve this? Many of Apple's technological patents were obtained through mergers and acquisitions. It is worth mentioning that Apple's merger and acquisition activities are forward-looking and predictive. It can be said that Apple had foreseen the future development of smartphone technology in advance, thus seizing the market opportunity first

The Iphone is undoubtedly the most successful smartphone product to date, which directly led Apple to break Nokia's 15-year consecutive top sales position in February 2011 and become the world's largest smartphone manufacturer.

The patented technology that leads the world trend is one of the "sharp weapons" for iphone to win the market. As is well known, Apple's multi-touch technology pioneered a new development direction for smart phones. Since then, almost all other mobile phone manufacturers have followed in its footsteps and vigorously researched human-computer interaction technologies represented by touch technology. However, Apple has not stood still and continues to carry out technological innovations. The latest Iphone4S released by Apple has the most significant improvement over previous smartphones, which is the addition of Siri voice assistant. Siri uses voice recognition technology based on background cloud computing and has been favored by users. It is believed that in the near future, speech recognition technology will lead a new trend and, like touch technology, will receive high attention from other mobile phone manufacturers, who will invest efforts in research and development.

Why is Apple's technology always one step ahead of others? Apart from Apple's market strategic vision, the company's patent strategy is also worth delving into.

In fact, many of Apple's technological patents were obtained through mergers and acquisitions.

Before Apple ventured into the smartphone sector, especially before 2002, the majority of the companies it acquired were engaged in personal computers, including operating systems, graphics chips, and peripheral software. However, after 2005, Apple acquired Fingerworks, a company specializing in gesture recognition, which holds significant patents for the invention of touch technology. In 2008 and 2010, Apple acquired two semiconductor companies, P.A.Semi and Inrinsity, both of which are renowned for manufacturing high-performance and low-power processors, thereby helping the Iphone achieve an overall reduction in energy consumption. In 2010, Apple acquired Siri, a company specializing in voice recognition, and promptly launched corresponding voice assistant products.

A careful analysis of Apple's development history reveals that its merger and acquisition strategy is based on its forward-looking and predictive judgment of technology. It purposefully acquires small companies with outstanding technical strength in a certain field, rather than acquiring leaders or well-known large companies in a certain technology field. It is precisely because of such a merger and acquisition strategy that Apple can "target its efforts", quickly make up for the deficiencies of its own products or break away from its reliance on other manufacturers, and further integrate the acquired companies into various R&D departments with its strong R&D capabilities and substantial financial resources to develop products with even better performance. The Iphone is the best evidence of Apple's acquisition strategy.

From 2009 to 2011, Apple successively acquired three mapping companies, including the map database company Placebase, the 3D mapping technology company Poly9, and the 3D mapping technology company C3Technologies based on Web pages. Map technology is precisely the key technology based on location services. There is reason to believe that Apple will increase its research and development of location-based services in the future and launch corresponding products.

Other smartphone manufacturers, are you under great pressure? Are you ready and can you hold on?