We often get waves of consolidation in specific industries. I remember when Larry Ellison was predicting a large consolidation in the software sector. He was definitely correct, although admittedly his company Oracle was turning out to be a prime consolidator. John Chambers has been around long enough to know how the industry works, so I wouldn't be surprised if he was correct.
Apple just has an ungodly amount of cash, it could buy about half the countries on the planet right now. It is hard to see them not buying something big in the future, although I am not sure what they could buy that would benefit them right now or that would avoid gov´t intervention.
I tend to agree. Steve Jobs probably wouldn't have been a fan of big purchases, but Tim Cook is certainly going to have to put that money to work somehow. There's only so much innovation they will really get out of what they're putting in and there are only so many dividend hikes that the market will accept without assuming the company has gone ex-growth.
The younger a technology is, the greater the danger something new will replace it. The fax machine has been pretty much killed off by email/internet it was a relatively young technology. IBM has moved away from hardware into providing software type solutions. Sun/Oracle will probably be arrond ofr a lobg time just for the simple fact that there are so many legacy databases out there. Cisco is facing stiff competition from Chinese companies, for them things could go bad.
