Apple Inc. has promised to spend $163 billion in cash, leading to breathless speculation about large acquisitions.

That type of spending is not like Apple AAPL, +3.03% , however. The company’s largest acquisition was headphone maker Beats Electronics Inc., for $3 billion, and the next largest was NeXT, the merger that brought Steve Jobs back to Apple. While Apple has reportedly checked in on some potential large targets, the company is much more likely to spend much of the cash in three areas: Original content, bringing down the costs of manufacturing its signature iPhone, and rewarding investors.

Here’s a closer look at those potential approaches.

Original content

Apple has already expressed interest in expanding its original-content offerings, and recent moves and commentary suggest this is still an area of priority for the company. Earlier this week, Apple said that it would acquire Texture, a magazine-subscription service, for an undisclosed amount, the type of small “tuck-in” acquisition that Apple is comfortable doing. The service has been dubbed the “Netflix of Magazines” and could help Apple enhance its Apple News platform.

Other content aims correspond with the company’s goal of growing its Apple Music service. Spotify Technology Inc. SPOT, +2.33% has almost double the number of paying subscribers as Apple Music, but Apple services chief Eddy Cue sees plenty of room for both to pick up new subscribers. He said at an SXSW event Monday that there are perhaps two billion people in the world who could pay for music subscriptions, while Apple and Spotify combined only have 100 million of them as subscribers currently. Apple declined to comment for this article.

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Apple has been trying to distinguish Apple Music through original video content since its June 2017 debut of “Planet of the Apps,” a dull “Shark Tank”-like series about the making of Apple apps. Cue has admitted that it’s taken Apple some time to make the right hires for its content business and added that Apple is “not after quantity, but quality” when it comes to original content.

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This suggests a major acquisition of a company like Netflix Inc. NFLX, +3.70% or Walt Disney Co. DIS, -2.50% isn’t part of Apple’s content strategy, but that’s not to say that Apple won’t be spending big bucks on original shows and movies. Netflix is set to spend $8 billion on content this year and continues to recruit big-name talent. Apple has made some notable hires of its own, but given the wealth of quality TV available in the streaming era, the company will have to be willing to pay up for shows that could actually generate broad interest.

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Drawing more people to Apple Music would help Apple boost its services segment, an area of the business that grew revenue by 18% in the latest quarter. Services like Apple Music and the App Store generate more recurring streams of revenue and keep people tied to Apple’s ecosystem, which could provide financial growth as device sales level out.

Optimizing the supply chain

Driving efficiencies in the supply chain is a key area of interest for Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook, who served in operational roles at the company before taking over the company from Jobs. Under Cook, Apple has taken steps to better control its supply chain, including buying its own industrial machinery so that machines can’t be used to make parts for competitors.

Apple could look to the supply chain as it winnows down its net cash balance. For example, the company may be interested in buying cobalt directly from miners and locking in prices for an extended period, according to a recent Bloomberg report. Cobalt is used to make batteries and prices for the material have soared amid booming demand for electric vehicles. GBH Insights analyst Daniel Ives estimates that Apple could save $500 million to $1 billion over the next three-to-four years by locking in cobalt prices.

Sourcing cobalt directly could also help Apple “improve environmental standards of the production of raw materials,” Forrester analyst Frank Gillett told MarketWatch, as the company could “finance or encourage suppliers who adhere to better environmental and labor standards.” Apple issues an annual report on “supplier responsibility,” and the latest one highlighted some of the company’s efforts to crack down on underage labor and debt bondage.

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From a price and sourcing perspective, the company may target areas that are “further up the value chain,” said Horace Dediu, founder and analyst at Asymco. Those could include display technology, battery technology, and processors.

“Historically, Apple has tried to make sure that it has multiple sources for some of their contracts, balanced across countries,” he told MarketWatch.

The company has reportedly started making its own display screens for the first time, according to a Bloomberg report published Monday.

Apple is facing sluggish growth in unit sales for the iPhone, but the analysts were divided on whether that’s prompting Apple to lower its cost of materials so that it can boost margins.

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In times of slowing growth, “you focus more on cutting costs and putting an iron fortress around the supply chain,” Ives said. But Dediu argued that “cost is secondary” for Apple, which is more worried about making sure “they’re not caught in a situation where they can’t ship enough of their product and they’re constrained.”

Gillett added that Apple reportedly faced a shortage of depth sensors with the iPhone X, which led to supply issues around the holidays.

“There are so many things you can do to help a supplier ramp,” he said, including lending skills and providing funds. Apple has shown an openness to that: Late last year, the company said it would make a $390 million award to Finisar Corp. US:FNSR, a U.S.-based supplier of the lasers that help facilitate depth sensing.

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Capital return

Given Apple’s historical aversion to big acquisitions, the bulk of its net cash will likely be returned to shareholders. Apple said last May that it was boosting its capital return program by $50 billion and planned to spend a total of $300 billion on the program through March 2019. Investors should expect another update this spring, when Apple reports its March-quarter results.

CFO Luca Maestri said on the company’s latest earnings call that Apple typically returns 100% of its free cash flow to shareholders and planned to take a similar approach going forward. Goldman Sachs analyst Rod Hall models $58 billion in buybacks for the current fiscal year, $74 billion for fiscal 2019, and $60 billion for fiscal 2020.

“This still leaves nearly $100 billion in net cash exiting FY20,” he wrote in a February note. “Said a different way, we see potential for Apple to get even more aggressive with their repurchases, depending on how quickly management would like to achieve zero net cash.” Hall has a neutral rating on shares and a $161 price target.