Apple-Sun merger rumours light up Valley

Complementary Californians spur reports of unexpected business combinations

Silicon Valley is awash with rumours that Apple could acquire Sun Microsystems to create one of the most stunning IT business combinations yet.

Apple and Sun have long been linked as potential partners given their shared status as Californian, anti-Microsoft platform owners with Unix software cores and reputations as innovators with heavy research-and-development budgets.

They would also be complementary as Apple is consumer- and client-orientated while Sun is business- and server-focused.

The rumours come at a time when Apple is enjoying its most successful spell for many years and Sun attempts to recover from its post-dotcom malaise.

Those contrasting fortunes are reflected in the firms’ respective stock performance. Any deal would see Apple, valued at $57.4bn, as much the senior partner to Sun, which has a market capitalisation of about $17.5bn.