A great opportunity to go short on Sony. Apple wont buy them - Apple buy small companies that make successful products, which Sony has not for quite some time.
Make money when the rumor pops and short.
Make money when the rumor pops and short.
They also make nice iPod competitors.
Of course, there's no reason why Apple would buy such a huge company. They prefer to buy small tech companies that they can absorb without losing their design and management DNA. Not big competitors. Not $33 billion companies with 163,000 employees.
But there are many companies which could be fixed by a CEO such as Jobs. What brick would Sony bring to Apple's offer that makes sense to buy rather than make?
* brand recognition? Sony's isn't too bad, but it's leagues away from Apple's.
* a bunch of Wintel PC with nice-looking casings? Come on!
* a bunch of almost adequate MP3 players? LOL.
* rights on their music and movies portfolio? This sounds much better, but I doubt they would buy the whole Sony-the-consumer-appliances-maker to get Sony-the-music-major.
I fail to see what would make Sony valuable specifically to Apple.
The Blu-Ray format sums up what is wrong with Sony. It's a dead end format which probably won't even recoup the money it took to develop.