No deal for Apple's $10bn Twitter takeover

Apple's negotiations with Twitter for a possible takeover of the microblogging social site ended with no deal agreed, according to rumors, with both firms arguably getting all they needed from Mountain Lion. Reports of the discussions – along with a possible separate investment deal, which tipped a potential valuation of over $10bn – broke last week, but according to Bloomberg's two insiders both approaches failed to result in an agreement.

The buy-out talks took place more than a year ago, one source disclosed, but did not end with any sort of investment agreement. A second round of negotiations were apparently held more recently – described by insiders as "in recent months" – at which point Apple supposedly considered pumping "hundreds of millions of dollars" into Twitter.

That would have resulted in an overall valuation in excess of $10bn for the micromessaging site, but talks again did not lead to a final deal. Neither Apple nor Twitter will comment on the speculation.

In the meantime, of course, Twitter integration has been heavily baked into first iOS 6 and then, hitting Macs in the past week, OS X Mountain Lion. Twitter is currently the only sharing network enabled in Mountain Lion – our full review of which is here - with Facebook integration expected to go live this fall.