Those from Asymco they made the graph above that shows the monetary reserves of the Apple company compared to the value of the companies that produce mobile phones. Apple currently has 82 billion dollars available in its accounts, and if we exclude Samsung, Apple could buy the rest of the mobile phone manufacturers and would be left with about 20 billion dollars to invest further. Basically, Apple has enough money to buy just the mobile division of Samsung or HTC, Nokia, RIM, LG, Motorola Mobility and Sony Ericsson all together.
In summary, in June Apple's cash was about 53% of the sum of competing phone vendor enterprise values. Today it's about 61%. Excluding Samsung, Apple could buy the industry and still have $25 billion left over. This makes the claim that "Apple could buy the industry" even more believable. This analysis is mainly academic. It does not imply that any such transaction will take place. As the purchase of Motorola shows, control has a premium and individual buyers may be less "rational" than markets.
Of course, the graph above only refers to the value of the mobile divisions of the respective companies and Apple could eradicate the competition if they wanted to, but only if the respective companies were desperate enough to let themselves be bought at those prices. Apple has an enormous monetary reserve and for now it doesn't really have anything to invest the money in, although it would need a few new factories to produce enough iDevices to cover the demand on the market.
