“Apple’s planned deal to buy Beats Electronics for $3.2 billion may not be finalized until next week, according to people familiar with the transaction,” Peter Kafka reports briefly for Re/code.
Brief article in full here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
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Or the week after or never.
Seeing as today is Thursday, this article is really prophetic!!! /s
yawn……but find a better use for the money.
Couldn’t they buy a well establish Porn company instead? Much more revenue in porn, if that is what it’s all about.
I’m still hoping and praying that this isn’t true…. I’m still debating whether I should dump my Apple stock.
The $3.2B transaction by itself isn’t the problem…$3.2B out of $150B is still relatively small, so Apple has PLENTY of cash.
It’s HOW they’re choosing to spend $3.2B. Beats makes headphones of lousy quality (but sell purely on rap-star trendiness) and has a streaming service that gets mixed reviews.
Looking at Apple’s acquisition history, that does NOT look like a company Apple should buy…and certainly not spending the most they’ve ever spent on an acquisition.
Buying Beats seems more like the kind of acquisition Google or Microsoft would do…trying to *buy* trendiness and popularity.
Yeah, if you want trendiness buy a Hollywood movie company that does snuff films or maybe a solid profitable porn company as I already suggested. Maybe like Al Gore selling Current TV to the oil billionaires at Al Jazeera, Apple could purchase an Islamic Girl Kidnapping and Dating Site. I think there is one for sale in Nigeria.
yep it sounds more like a microsoft move.
if they want a streaming service they should just buy pandora.
Maybe they are trying to trick Samedung into outbidding them.
You should dump your Apple stock because you clearly don’t understand how this acquisition can benefit Apple immensely. All you look at is your perceptions about the headphones.
Beats is viewed as the premier headphones by teens and young adults, celebrities and athletes, and therefore has huge command of the most cherished marketing demographics. Beats Music has a monster conversion rate to paid subscriptions from free trials, and this isn’t something cheap like Pandora’s $3/mo. Beats Music is $15/mo., and about 87% of free trial users are paying it.
Apple isn’t buying “trendiness”, Apple is buying a music marketing monster at a time when iTunes is seeing its first declines in music sales. Plus, Apple’s iTunes Radio hasn’t exactly lit the streaming world on fire.
Apple’s acquisition of Beats almost exactly parallels when Apple purchased SoundJam (I think that’s the name), the software it rebranded iTunes so it could jump start the iPod with the best music experience on any digital device. Now Apple is buying Beats, whose streaming music app and experience is IMO one of the best available. It certainly beats Pandora or iTunes Radio.
They already have iTunes Exclusives. This is about relieving pressure and putting it to your enemies, just like Netflix did.