One of Apple's top executives has raised the prospect of the company buying Time Warner, the owner of HBO, CNN and Warner Brothers.
Eddy Cue, who oversees the running of major divisions within the company including the iTunes store, Apple Music and iCloud, brought the idea up during a meeting with Olaf Olafsson, Time Warner’s head of corporate strategy according to three Apple sources who spoke to The Financial Times.
The meeting was arranged to discuss other commercial opportunities such as the inclusion of Time Warner content on Apple streaming platforms.
The reports say that the talk did not go past a preliminary stage, and Tim Cook was never involved.
As media and entertainment markets become increasingly fragmented companies like Apple are increasingly interested in owning content producers, Time Warner has a market capitalisation of close to $60bn.
Apple is believed to be sitting on a cash pile of $216bn.
It has invested $1bn in Didi Chuxing, China's answer to Uber, and it has begun producing original video content for Apple Music.
Apple and Time Warner have not commented on the reports.