Amazon

[Slamz]

I'd say that's exactly what they are doing. For their first 25 years they did computers and pretty much nothing else. In the last 10 or so they've moved into the music business (iPod), the phone business (iPhone), tablet computers (iPad), the book business (iBooks), and mostly likely the TV business later this year. If that isn't growth and diversification, I don't know what is. Certainly compared to Google, who still get something like 99% of their money from search.

That's not much diversity. In fact, the iPod appears to have already peaked and is in decline, almost certainly because the iPhone has replaced it.

And much of their "diversity" is really interconnected. Samsung, for example, sells printers but they aren't reliant on the success of some Samsung branded computer for their success. Samsung's computer business could go belly up tomorrow and the rest of Samsung would function just fine. Samsung has a lot of diversity in their offerings.

Apple is tight-knit. It may be what got them to where they are but I think it's precarious and as a potential investor, it worries me. They seem to take the Mark Twain approach: "put all of your eggs into one basket and watch that basket."

I think investor confidence would go up if they could either release something new and big that's not quite so intricately tied to their previous products or if it was a bit clearer that they had some good plans for their excess billions.

This sort of thing is worrysome, too:
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Apple, despite being way richer than a lot of other companies on that list, is spending relatively little on R&D, both in terms of real dollars and percentages. I mean really. They're being outspent by Seagate and EMC? It does make me wonder what the heck they're doing, or where they're planning to go as a company.