It's still a horrible fit for the reasons you mentioned...people don't buy Apple products for those reasons. At least not everyone. Beats really has no claim to fame. They don't do anything better than anyone else who produces headphones except marketing. Apple markets better plus just has better products. So I don't see why they acquired a headphone company since they could easily grow their own line of headphones for less than 3bn I would think.
It's a little appalling that Apple is putting its name in the "Pill". It's unanimously one of the worst, if not the worse, portable Bluetooth speakers on the market. It's so cliche by now to say "Steve would of never allowed this", but this time it's blatantly obvious!
Fortunately for Apple and shareholders, they will inevitably grow the brand just because they are pushing it.
What I don't understand is why Apple couldn't design their own headphones...they have the best speakers in their products already, why would it be such a leap for them to launch their own cans?
2 reasons really. First, because people buy them. Develop their own cans and then market them, maybe they'll sell, or it will be like the Apple iPod Hi-Fi and not do that well. Or they acquire Beats and masses already buy them and Apple gets the benefit.
And you say, why drop $3B on it. Well, that's the 2nd reason. Apple probably bought Beats more for the subscription service, the subscribers, and the streaming deals, as well as the execs who made those deals, than anything else.
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you can substitute Beats with Apple and still have a perfectly logical paragraph.
but i'd better not start this argument here and now 😀
i just mean to say that apple has never been interested in providing us with the best performance for the buck, but rather has other priorities: appeal, aesthetics, functionality.
in this point of view beats is a perfect match and mate of apple ecosystem, especially in the US, not so much here in the EU, yet.
Apple products, computers, smartphones, etc. are arguably top tier in performance, and coupled with innovation, i.e. Air, Retina, battery life, weight, etc. But they don't always match spec for spec with competitors, part because that isn't their strategy and part because of their release cycles. Now they don't go to war on price in producing high end tech, and that is true. But that isn't to say they don't perform as well as most high end stuff. Add to that that Apple does a lot more with their vertical integration from OS to hardware.
But the other point is that while computers are performance, benchmark, spec heavy consumer goods, the performance you talk about there and the performance in the headphone market is a different game. And that is a huge difference and doesn't make them interchangeable.
