Today, Apple officially revealed its plan to buy Beats Electronics for $3 billion, confirming the mostpoorly kept corporate secret of the year. The deal is Apple’s biggest acquisition ever.
In an interview with The New York Times, Apple CEO Tim Cook saved his highest praise not for the Beats headphones or the Beats streaming music app but for the company’s talent. Beats co-founders, longtime music executive Jimmy Iovine and rapper and producer Dr. Dre, will now work for Apple’s head of internet services Eddy Cue. “These guys are really unique,” Mr. Cook told the Times. “It’s like finding the precise grain of sand on the beach.”
Apple would say little about the products it plans to develop now that Beats is a part of its tightly-knit family. Apparently, neither iTunes nor Beats Music, its rival-to-Spotify app launched just a few months ago, will be shelved. “You don’t build everything yourself,” Cook told the Times. “It’s not one thing that excites us here.”
And the Beats brand doesn’t seem to be going anywhere either. Beats will continue to sell its own branded headphones, which means no apple logo instead of the Beats “b.” This makes sense, since the brand’s cachet is a big part of what Apple is getting for its $2.6 billion in cash and $400 million in stock. As the Times points out, Apple typically does smaller deals and brings those companies in-house. Sometimes, those companies, typically startups, are never heard from again. But with Beats, Apple is buying a company that has already built itself into a powerful consumer brand.
The Beats headphones may not please the most stringent audiophile, but sound isn’t the only thing Beats customers are buying. Much like Apple, Beats has leveraged its design talent to engineer a sense of connection between itself and the people buying its products. Apple seems to know better than to spend $3 billion just to give that up. The fascinating thing to watch will be how Apple manages such a visibly separate brand while at the same time integrating Beats into its own business.
“I’ve always known in my heart that Beats belonged with Apple,” Iovine said in Apple’s press release. What he and Dre do now that they are a part of Apple — and how much freedom Apple gives them to do it — will say much about how the world’s most valuable company plans to write its next chapter.
Source: wired.com BY MARCUS WOHLSEN
Apple would say little about the products it plans to develop now that Beats is a part of its tightly-knit family. Apparently, neither iTunes nor Beats Music, its rival-to-Spotify app launched just a few months ago, will be shelved. “You don’t build everything yourself,” Cook told the Times. “It’s not one thing that excites us here.”
And the Beats brand doesn’t seem to be going anywhere either. Beats will continue to sell its own branded headphones, which means no apple logo instead of the Beats “b.” This makes sense, since the brand’s cachet is a big part of what Apple is getting for its $2.6 billion in cash and $400 million in stock. As the Times points out, Apple typically does smaller deals and brings those companies in-house. Sometimes, those companies, typically startups, are never heard from again. But with Beats, Apple is buying a company that has already built itself into a powerful consumer brand.
The Beats headphones may not please the most stringent audiophile, but sound isn’t the only thing Beats customers are buying. Much like Apple, Beats has leveraged its design talent to engineer a sense of connection between itself and the people buying its products. Apple seems to know better than to spend $3 billion just to give that up. The fascinating thing to watch will be how Apple manages such a visibly separate brand while at the same time integrating Beats into its own business.
“I’ve always known in my heart that Beats belonged with Apple,” Iovine said in Apple’s press release. What he and Dre do now that they are a part of Apple — and how much freedom Apple gives them to do it — will say much about how the world’s most valuable company plans to write its next chapter.
Source: wired.com BY MARCUS WOHLSEN
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