As Ive mentioned before, this is the real reason for the purchase of Beats. Sell/Stream to non-apple users. A 3 billion dollar trojan horse.
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Apple Announces $3 Billion Beats Acquisition, Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre Joining the Company
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As Ive mentioned before, this is the real reason for the purchase of Beats. Sell/Stream to non-apple users. A 3 billion dollar trojan horse.
It is not often I toss john gruber into the irrational group but he has been there along with many others for this whole journey.
The oddest question being asked over and over is we will have to wait and see if and how it makes sense. It has always made sense. Financially, philosophically. Every piece of the package makes sense. The Iovine angle has been covered. Beats is a very profitable company which makes the price a no brainer. Dr. Dre is one of the most successful producers in the history of music. Almost every product apple sells uses headphones. Apple wants to be in the streaming music business and are jazzed to expand on the curated style that beats offers. Beats headphones dominate the high end market for their product category.
The reality is there is not a part of the deal that does not make sense. I am massively hesitant to even bring race up but when people viscerally react so negatively to a deal that makes sense from every angle and is a no brainer yet people continue to say they don't get it or will have to wait and see... Well that makes me think something much more unsavory is going on in people's thought processes and that is disappointing. It is not like people who are upset about it and against have shown why financially it is a bad deal. They have not demonstrated why having access to Iovine and Dre would be bad. They have not shown what is bad about a company who has sold hundreds of millions of devices that use headphones, acquiring the dominant high end headphone manufacturer. They have not demonstrated why having a curated streaming service is bad.
In the totality of the deal none of those against it have laid out even a quasi legitimate argument against any of those pieces. The best that seems to come up is it is not Apple. At this point that is simply code people are using to say Beats is too black or too Urban. And no arguing that you don't like the quality of the headphones when they absolutely own almost the entire high end headphone market is NOT a legitimate reason to not understand why it is a good deal. And there is nothing more fundamentally Apple than wanting to dominate the high end of a market segment with large margins.
People are either going to need to start coming up with actual reasoned responses based on all the pieces available or else you are just coming across as someone who has a deeper seeded issue that has nothing to do with good business. Quite a few journalists fall into this same camp. Saying apple should have bought spotify with it's not real four billion dollar valuation and red ink is just being a dumb racist.
If you can't understand why this deal makes sense I feel bad for you. It is pretty obvious. If this deal makes you sick to your stomach, I feel bad for your soul.
Hobe Sound... I lived there from the time I was 2 until I was 7... still have family in Jupiter and visit sometimes. It sure is a beautiful area. Are the schools still awful? I remember the teacher literally paddling a black 1st grader with a plank of wood. Must have been about 1982.
The Moto X line is the only Android phone that may make me switch. That said, I've yet to see one in the wild, only in the stores when I browse.
I see Beats every single day, I stream music every single day.
The prices were right for both products.
I commend Dr. Dre. He's a great business man.
The Black community as spoken.
Steve would have hated this comment. You must have been really mad when Apple started selling Beats' headphones in Apple Stores several years ago. Job's would never have allowed that...except he did.
You know conservatives and racists dont need facts to back up their claims. Their opinion is colored by their racism. No amount of facts and figures will change that. Ignorance is the cornerstone of racism.
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Just because Facebook bought for Whatsapp for billions, doesn't make it right! I still think both these moves are huge blunders. These CEO's that don't live "in the real world", don't really have a grasp on the true value of money. They are throwing it around like its play money, when it fact, it's actually money that is owned by all of us stock holders. In other words, they are not spending money out of their own pocket, but money out of "OUR" pockets. Is Facebook basically saying they couldn't find an app building team to build a simple photo sharing app, so they had to spend BILLIONS to attain it?? And Apple cannot find anyone "in the real world" who they can hire to improve iTunes?!
This basically comes down to one filthy rich guy padding another filthy rich guy's pockets with enermous amounts of money. It's just like the rich club, where the CEO of one company hires a big wig from another compnay to be on his companies board of directors, so they ALL can pat each other on the back and hand over to each other OUR money!
So as a stockholder, if Apple told you they could invest a chunk of their available cash and get an 8%-12% return annually on it, would that make you happy or sad? Realize money sitting around for money's sake is not getting you more than 1% a year.
The whatsapp deal is unjustifiable and stupid. This deal is not only fiscally responsible and a money maker, it is a great value. This deal adds MORE value to your already undervalued apple stock. If you were analyzing this all correctly you would be buying as much apple stock as you could afford right now.
Whatsapp has a few hundred million in revenue a year, if that. Beats is on pace for 1.5 billion dollars in revenue this year. Nest, which sold for almost the same price as beats does about 300-350 million dollars in revenue. It is possible Beats could generate nearly as much profit this year as Nest generates revenue, and they sold for the same price.
There are other reasons to buy a business than profitability, but through time that has been the best and most successful reason. Buying companies that don't make money are huge risks. This Beats deal is the antithesis of that. The profits beats makes will recoup the price of the acquisition in ten to fifteen years with no additional growth and no synergy. The streaming service, Iovine, Dre, they all essentially were gotten for free because Beats headphones will pay for all of it on its own.
There is no way for whatsapp to recoup nineteen billion dollars, ever.
Given the amount of passion and anger this issue has invoked, I can't help but think that race does play a part for some people.
Selling a few headphones at your store is very different than spending $3 billion buying out the company all together. I hope you understand the difference.
This point is very relevant and IMO speaks to Apple wanting to shift their demographic toward younger buyers who will potentially be customers for a long time.
The older Apple computer customer base had been influenced by higher end uses for the Mac and the cost of getting into a Mac computer were fairly high. That demographic is aging and Apple is downshifting their product line toward mass consumer products and the success of the iPod and iPhone have demonstrated how profitable consumer gadgets can be.
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You've managed to commit 2 logical fallacies in 1 post. Ad hominem attack and appeal to authority. Good job!
Why not try it out for yourself. I like that its integrated with iTunes. I like the UI. Its really easy to use and I have lost my songs like I did on Spotify even tho they automatically debit my account...
Idk just ask yourself what type of person beats headphones are marketed to and ask yourself if that fits with Apple's classy brand. Do a lot of highly educated people wear beats headphones?
Here's to... they will use their engineering knowhow to improve some very popular headphones to Apple standard.
What are the doctorates doing vs the high school grads? Steve jobs was a high school grad from the US. Dont knock it.
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JayZ didnt get the memo.
Wow! It actually happened. I guess the only thing to do now is see if it was worth it or not. It will be interesting to see what comes out of this.
It actually happened. I guess the only thing to do now is see if it was worth it or not. It will be interesting to see what comes out of this.
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