What Does Apple Need Twitter For, Anyway?

A flurry of weekend rumors that Apple might buy a stake in Twitter have been quashed, as sources tell Bloomberg News that negotiations between the two companies broke down more than a year ago. But would a piece of the social network have been worth the price?

The deal on the table valued Twitter at more than $10 billion, the New York Times reported Friday, and would have cost Apple hundreds of millions of dollars. The world’s most valuable company certainly has the dough—it has more than $117 billion of cash and liquid investments—but likely shied away after doing the cost-benefit analysis, says Horace Dediu, an industry analyst with a focus on Apple. “It may have hit a rock in terms of making sense financially,” he says.