Will Beats be a wholly owned subsidiary or integrated into Apple?
I would imagine corporate structure will provide the answers on why Apple made this decision.
Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics
121–130 of 351 posts
Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
> reinvented the higher-end headphone market. Rebranded mid-range electronics with pop star endorsements and hype. Do people really consider Beats to be high end?
A Lexus is a re-branded Toyota; it's still high-end.
As an owner of a new Lexus -- absolutely. Can't wait until my lease is up.
Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics
#123This is smart and as a non-apple user it could suck if Apple starts blocking cross-platform compatibility. Beats is actually MOG which is an amazing services that specialized in streaming 320's mp3's. It sounded amazing and I think it currently sounds better than Spotify at high quality. What sucks is what do people do if they currently have a beats sub but really don't have anything to do with Apple.
Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics
#124This could have a mobile angle too. The HTC One was branded with Beats speakers and headphones.
Maybe they'll do an iphone with "Beats Audio" rather than wait for another Android phone to have partnered with Beats.
Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your argument makes sense, but it kind of falls apart when you consider that Beats aren't actually good headphones, to the point where The Wirecutter actually did an article[1] where they listed all the various Beats products and then provided examples of better deals (some of them with significantly better quality at half the price). I don't understand why Apple would buy a headphone company that makes pretty but lo…
>> "company that makes pretty but lousy products whose price is only justified by the brand name" Isn't that something people accuse Apple of doing? Maybe lousy is pushing it a bit but Apple has always been accused of charging high end prices for pretty but mid-range/mediocre hardware. I don't agree with this characterisation but it's one that's always been around.
The difference is that people in the know (for Apple, the kind of people on HN, for Beats, the kind of people on Head-Fi) would say that the characterization is wrong for Apple, and right for Beats.
Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Factually true, but as they created and own pretty much the entire market for $300 headphones, one has to concede they have the title of high end headphones... high end doesnt necessarily mean highest quality.
Not really true - Sony and Sennheiser (as well as AKG and other less known companies) had the market covered already.
Except Beats created a new market - a group of people who couldn't actually afford $300 headphones but bought them anyway. Just as you see people who buy iPhones and iPods but can't really afford them.
Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics
#127Apple redefined the mp3 player market, the ultraportable laptop market, the smartphone market, the tablet market, and now they're buying a company that reinvented the higher-end headphone market. Is it smart of a brand that has traditionally created their own iconic images to buy another cultural icon for $3 billion? I don't think so. Maybe this gets used a lot, but would Steve Jobs have done this? Or would he have c…
I'm not willing to bet anything on that, one week before WWDC in a year where Tim Cook has already gone on record saying that Apple is going to launch "new product categories".
Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
That doesn't mean they're not part of the higher-end headphone market .
High-end is a sonic category, not a price category. There are extremely expensive audio systems that are targeted towards concerts, etc..
That's an interesting definition. I think of it as a synonym of "upscale," which refers explicitly to high price but does generally have a connotation of high quality as well.
Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics
#129The most interesting reveal from Tim Cook's quote is that he only mentions the music service and the talent, not the headphones. That's super interesting. It basically means Apple looked at this like a typical Apple aquihire / component technology purchase (of the service), that just happened to have a multi-billion dollar profitable accessories business attached to it. That makes it a very unique kind of deal.
Wild hypothesis. Amazon started as a book distributor. Now it is fighting to become a publisher. iTunes + iPod started as a music distributor. What if it now has ambitions as a label? How would one build that out of Cupertino? One would start with a fringe, fragmented genre, to serve as a beachhead. Fragmented by not flat - there should be a node near the top of a hierarchy which can be acquired and leveraged. $1.3 b…
Didn't they sign an agreement with Apple Records that they would not start a record label?
Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics
#130The most interesting reveal from Tim Cook's quote is that he only mentions the music service and the talent, not the headphones. That's super interesting. It basically means Apple looked at this like a typical Apple aquihire / component technology purchase (of the service), that just happened to have a multi-billion dollar profitable accessories business attached to it. That makes it a very unique kind of deal.
Wild hypothesis. Amazon started as a book distributor. Now it is fighting to become a publisher. iTunes + iPod started as a music distributor. What if it now has ambitions as a label? How would one build that out of Cupertino? One would start with a fringe, fragmented genre, to serve as a beachhead. Fragmented by not flat - there should be a node near the top of a hierarchy which can be acquired and leveraged. $1.3 b…
You'd have to be pretty insane to spend $3b to get into the content industry in 2014. First, it's an industry that's been plummeting for a decade, secondly, the entire recording industry is worth about that much, and thirdly, the entire concept of making money from copyrighted works of art is under threat.
This theory doesn't hold water, sorry.