I dont know...maybe buyout RIMM for $8 billion and control another 20% of the smartphone market. Then use the other $90 billion to do a cash & stock swap to buyout Google and control the other 50% of the market and slowly integrate iOS and android until they are the same operating system and you've practically got a monopoly on smartphones and tablets. Thats 1 thing they could've done. But I guess giving the money away seemed like a better idea. I mean hell...if it works for the US government...
I not sure why you refer to returning money to share holders, the owners of the company, as giving it away.
In the long term, stock price is generally driven by large institutional investors such as mutual funds. Paying a dividend opens Apple stock to acquisition to an entire new set of funds that require a stock pay a dividend to be included. This, of course, will drive more future institutional buying. This is good news at a time where the Apple market cap has reached "mega-sized" and it gets more difficult to drive stock price.
I am sure the DOJ would look kindly on AAPL owning 90% of the smartphone OS market. Sounds reasonable to you? You must be Randall Stephenson's investment banker.
To add to the reality check. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-dividend-funds-darling-190200895.html?l=1
And that money's going to make more interest in Apple's money market account than in the shareholders?
Apple has plenty of shareholders now. Dont need a bunch of new mutual funds buying apple and pushing the price up to ridiculous levels only to have it crash one day like a dot com. Apple could also use the money to grow the business through research & development, or just recieve interest on the money. And if that dividend tax goes through next year it will just screw the shareholders even more. Shareholders would save money by selling apple stock and paying 15% capital gains tax on the profits than paying the new 45% dividend tax on the dividends. Heck, even the short term capital gains will save money on taxes. This $10 billion dividend is basically giving $4.5 billion dollars of shareholder money to the government every year. And we all know how they are going to spend it.