In a surprise announcement this morning, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that the giant computer and phone maker has purchased the Radio Shack Corporation. Radio Shack has attracted a lot of attention recently for the company's clever "The eighties want their store back" ads that attempted to highlight Radio Shack's shift in marketing strategy. But industry analysts have been uncertain that the changes were enough to bring some momentum back to the company.
When interviewed about the move, Cook had some interesting comments. "With the continuing success of our Apple stores, we wanted to dramatically expand our retail footprint, and we've nearly exhausted the big city venues. Radio Shack's most valuable asset are the thousands of stores in smaller towns and cities. This gives us an opportunity to expand quickly."
Cook went on to reveal a stunning new product line that could dramatically alter Apple's future direction. Cook explained, "We kept looking at the huge success of Maker Spaces and of products like the Raspberry Pi single board computer. Personally, I just got tired of hearing there is no innovation left at Apple. So we said, "To hell with it, let's go for broke." We are renaming the Radio Shack stores as "Apple Shacks," and the flagship product is going to be a keystone item in an entirely new Apple product line aimed at Maker Spaces and experimenters: The Apple Pi."
Norman Feisterburger, Apple's new head of the Apple Shack line of business, provided more detail about the new product. "The Apple Pi is a single board computer designed for the huge surge in interest that Maker Spaces are bringing to the hobbyist market place. The Apple Pi comes with everything you need to get into programming, house control, media control, and "maker" projects. The board has HDMI, Ethernet, and USB interfaces, and comes with 32 Gig of storage space in a micro SD card. And best of all, the Apple Pi comes loaded with the command line version of Unix and the Mach kernel that runs on all Mac, iPad, and iPhone products. We're opening up the Mac platform to a whole new generation of "makers," and we expect that the Apple Pi will become the dominant platform for development in the "Internet of Things."
When asked about the cost of this new venture, Tim Cook brushed off the financing issues. "Radio Shack has been struggling for so long, we were able to pick up the whole company, including all the stores, for a little less than $7 billion. And to tell you the truth, we came up with the idea when an intern was cleaning out some filing cabinets in Steve Job's office and she found $14 billion stuffed in a bottom drawer in an assortment of international currencies. We looked at the cash and said to ourselves, "We are getting slammed in the press for not being innovative. What this calls is a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part!" So we all shouted, "Let's do it!" I got on the phone with the CEO of Radio Shack and we closed the deal in less than a week.
Cook indicated that the rebranding of the stores will take place on April 1st, 2014, and he also hinted that a Retina-based 12" iPhone may be released at the same time.