Apple cash worth more than caps of RIM, Nokia, Motorola

Could sustain business for seven years

Apple's cash reserves have grown so large that they're now worth more than the market capitalizations of Nokia, RIM an Motorola Mobility put together, notes Asymco's Horace Dediu. The company's second-quarter results brought the company up to $65.8 billion in reserves, including both straight cash and marketable securities. If a person owns $100,000 of Apple stock today, Dediu notes, about $19,000 of that should be cash and $80,000 "at risk" capital.

The company's reserves are said to be so big that they are worth half of Google's enterprise value, and position the Apple CFO office amongst the top 100 biggest fund managers in the world, and larger than any hedge fund manager. The company's Q2 cash growth alone is said to have been greater than the market cap of many firms. If pre-payments were to be added back, says Dediu, the quarterly Apple cash increase would've been equivalent to Motorola Mobility's market cap.

Dediu remarks that even if Apple revenue came to a halt, its cash could continue to support operations for another seven years, until the middle of 2018. Some investment groups have argued however that the company should return some of the cash to shareholders, whether through dividends, payouts or buybacks. Apple is believed to use the reserve both as a security blanket and as a fund for strategic corporate acquisitions.