Apple on Wednesday confirmed its plans to buy Beats , acquiring a popular headphones business and subscription streaming music service.
- Apple is buying Beats for $3 billion not $3.2 billion as earlier announced. Like there’s a difference.
- Apple is most likely buying Beats for the talent, hardware[amazing, premium headphones] and the Beats Music subscription service [music subscription service done right].
- Beats might be the new iPod. Beats headphones are the iconic representation for music for this decade the same way the iPod represented music a decade ago.
- Beats co-founders, Dr Dre and Jimmy Lovine will be joining Apple after the acquisition as part of the management team
- Apple/Beats acquisition isn’t about Apple’s existing customer base, but for the next-generation of would-be Apple customers.
- Apple plans on keeping the Beats brand name alive, but we might have co-branded Apple headphones and portable speakers in the not-too-distant future.
- The Apple-Beats deal might also be about video streaming, to launch Apple’s content business [the long-awaited iTV?].
- The Beats go on at HP until 2015, so if you’re looking to buy an HP machine with integrated Beats Audio, you have a year and a half before the companies dissolve their partnership.
Steve Wozniak thinks the acquisition could be a smart move for Apple. Do you?
