Apple Acquired 24 Companies In The Last 18 Months

Apple’s pace of acquisition has seemed to be picking up lately, and Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed just how many the company has been making of late. Cupertino has nabbed 24 companies over the course of the past year and a half, which is a pace that observers recently noticed actually outpaces the recent acquisition habits of Google.

Typically, Apple doesn’t make any official announcements when it acquires smaller companies, instead waiting until the deals are ferreted out by those of us in the media, or revealed through other means. Once discovered, it usually issues a boilerplate statement about how it makes acquisitions from time to time, without actually confirming anything directly. That means that while we may have a good idea of most of those 24 companies based on reports collected over the past few years (Wikipedia offers a solid list), it’s possible some have still gone unnoticed.

Apple’s acquisition pace suggests a company that’s increasingly willing to spend on external purchases to advance its plans for internal R&D and product development efforts.