Apple has hired HP's leading legal corporate buyout specialist, Charles Charnas. He "only" led the $25 billion merger between Compaq and HP, so there's "some" reason to believe Apple is making a strategic acquisition sometime soon.

"He's been known as one of the high-profile heavy hitter corporate lawyers in Silicon Valley for many years," said Anna Marie Armstrong, a legal recruiter for Mlegal, expressing a few thoughts about Apple's recent move. "It seems like Apple's at a point where they want to hire really senior experienced lawyers for their in-house department," she told Law.com.

It is known for a fact that Apple has about $18 billion to spend on anything from socks to airplanes. Apple's Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer once hinted that the Cupertino-based corporation will be investing some of that cash into something, rather than buying back stock: "Our preference continues to be to maintain a strong balance sheet in order to preserve our flexibility to make strategic investments and/or acquisitions."

It is being speculated that Apple might just be interested in acquiring Dell, whose shares are dropping in price as we speak. This could potentially help Apple introduce low cost Macs, according to 9to5mac.com, "massively inflating its market share and disrupting the industry landscape." Other potential targets include Sun, Yahoo, or even an Apple-Sony merger. According to the same source, all this speculation is "based on one key and highly salient fact: Apple has hired one of the most experienced buyout specialists in Silicon Valley to lead a part of its legal team that's focsed on acquisitions."

Some will say Adobe makes a lot of sense, as an acquisition. Which it does, because it would allow Apple to control a big part of the software market for both Mac and Windows. Others will see telecommunications as the best field to spend some of that $18 billion Apple is sitting on. After all, that iPhone is taking off pretty darn fast and slapping that baby with some 3G will only make it even more attractive.

Apple needs to warn investors of any major investment of acquisition plans before they take place, making April 23 (the day Apple announces its financial results) a day to mark on the calendar.