Five years later: was the acquisition of Beats worth it?

Five years ago, Apple announced its biggest acquisition: the purchase of Beats electronics for $ 3 billion. At that time, the headphone and loudspeaker business was booming, but since the takeover, some turmoil makes us speculate: was the investment worth it?

According to the editor of Engadget Billy Steele, yes. Naturally, Apple is not scoring and, despite the slowdown in Beats' expressiveness within the speaker market, Apple has managed to get gas in another market niche: streaming of songs. To understand how this happened exactly, we need to go back in time.

How it all started

Beats was founded in 2006 by Interscope Records co-founder Jimmy Iovine and rapper / producer Andre Romelle Young (aka Dr. Dre). Originally, the brand focused on producing headphones and speakers, and in 2012 the company had 64% of the market over $ 100 of these accessories.

as the phonographic industry advanced into the era of streaming, Iovine and Dr. Dre realized this change and entered this niche in early 2014 with the Beats music. The service, which emerged from the acquisition of another platform for streaming MOG focused on curating playlists and in customizing the music style of each user something that remained alive on Apple Music.

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Image: https://www.engadget/2019/05/28/apple-beats-five-years-later/

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From left to right: Jimmy Iovine, Tim Cook, Dr. Dre. and Eddy Cue.

For Steele, the reason why the acquisition of Beats paid off for Apple is precisely that the whole post-purchase process was carried out with the makers of the brand, in this case Iovine, Dr. Dre (besides the singer and producer Trent Reznor, who continues to work on the streaming Ma music.

Working on its own, it could take years to build, and yet it might not have been as good as what they did with the help of Iovine, Dr. Dre, Reznor, and others. Apple bought a company, conquered its assets and retained its talent to keep the work going as often as it did. Five years later, business is booming, and that's something casual in Cupertino.

Apple Music currently has over 40 million subscribers worldwide and has already surpassed its biggest competitor, Spotify, in the US market. Of course, not everything about the transformation of Beats Music into Apple Music; After all, Beats has a huge headphone and speaker business that Apple is keeping its way.

The headphones

You may recall that in 2016, when Apple introduced iPhones 7/7 Plus, Beats announced three headset options (Powerbeats3 Wireless, Solo3 Wireless and BeatsX) powered by Ma's W1 chip, the same as AirPods.

Although Beats headphones have (legitimately) been criticized for abusing the bass and the quality of the material used in manufacturing (which prized brand recognition over good design), in recent years this has changed.

More recently, with the release of Powerbeats Pro, many users have identified with the product and praised the quality of the brand's first truly wireless headset.

This, as we said, is the result of the partnership between the two companies (and their executives) over these five years. In this sense, just as Apple took advantage of Beats Music to bring its own platform to life, Beats also leveraged Apple's engineering and technology to leverage the quality of its products.

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To interested parties, reading the report of the Engadget more than indicated.

via the loop