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Apple Announces $3 Billion Beats Acquisition, Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre Joining the Company
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I suspect some people hope Ive could design a lighter colored version of Dr. Dre.
Somehow I doubt Google or Microsoft wanted to purchase Beats. They are probably both laughing the image hit Apple will cope from having Dr Dre join apple, no amount of money they have could have achieved that.
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Less unapologetic plastic, more aluminium, and 50% more expansive
though same crap sound quality
Yep just as much..He probably put it together, typical Record company middle man..getting as much money as possible. Good luck to them if Apple are foolish enough to pay them.
I wouldn't hold your breath, they've only managed to get iTunes Radio out in two countries so far.
You should educate yourself on google's core business. The one that generates all the money that allows them to spend money on all this stuff that doesn't make money. It is not nice. Google is a pretty crappy company to do business with. Just so you know, you are google's content they sell to others. And while they are very succesful they fun it with extremely poor ethics, consideration and just common decency. This is like the opposite of how apple treats its customers. If I were going to weirdly fetishize large companies as a hobby, I think I would favor the one that actually treated the customers well.
Almost nobody here is a customer of google and most people have no idea how google operates their core business. It is nothing anyone should be proud of. So while you may enjoy watching their little side projects, realize that almost all of google's income comes from selling online advertising. Having worked with them and spent very large sums of money with them and knowing many others as well, they do a crappy job. They also do a lot of things that are at best borderline ethical.
But yeah I could see apple buying a headphone company is comparable. If you really are intent on making google your new hobby it would not hurt to educate yourself on the part of the company that generates all the money to pay for all the money losing things you enjoy so much. Google is not held in high regard by a very large percentage of their customers.
Probably the best advice would be scrapping the public corporate love affair hobby altogether. It is a requisite that public companies earnestly pursue growth and profits.
There are too many upset neckbeards in this thread. Apple is in both the electronics and music business. This is an exciting acquisition for the latter.
The later is not really true. As for the former, this is a common refrain and it doesn't hold any water. Beats outsells the entire rest of the industry by more than two to one in the high end segment and has close to 40% of the entire market.
They buy Beats and they can invest resources into improving and diversifying the products, from a position of dominant strength.
They buy any of the numerous companies suggested by audio nerds, who have tiny marketshare and zero mass market brand recognition and they would have to fight against Beats dominating presence the whole way. It would make little to no sense to do that. They would be better off doing it on their own then but that would still be much worse than buying into the dominant position in the market.
Beats has taken over the headphone industry precisely because they don't cater to audio nerds. Apple can bring value and support to Beats already dominating market position.
I keep saying it, but opportunities like this almost never come up. Both sides seem to have gotten pretty lucky with how this played out. Beats had just re acquired its outstanding shares owned by HTC. They were not likely looking to sell. The company has seen astronomical growth and high profitability. They had to believe Apple was capable of taking them places that they could not get to on their own and that no other buyer would have been able to make happen. From Apple's standpoint they got several huge pieces for an amazing price. The reason why you don't see deals like this happen is because it is such a good opportunity people want too much. Apple was able to sell themselves to close this deal. That Apple could carry the Beats brand beyond what they could have ever hoped for.
I know some people think that financially favorable opportunities to buy companies who dominate their industry, make a lot of money, offer unique personnel and emerging businesses in direct line of need come around every day. They do not.
People think the reason why Apple only stuck to modestly priced purchases was because of some kind of rule. And it was, but it was not a rule not to spend more than five hundred million dollars on a company. It was a rule not to make financially irresponsible acquisitions. This may be the only deal of this size that offered businesses tied to what apple does that was responsible in the past ten years and you may not see another one for ten more years.
A lot of things had to align for this to happen. Beats was not looking to sell to just anyone and just for the money. Apple was not looking to just buy a multi billion dollar company because. Apple has always been prudent with their acquisitions and this is no different. I suspect one would find it nearly impossible to find any Silicon Valley tech related acquisitions any time recently or even longer than that were over a billion dollars and were as financially sound.
You can count on zero fingers the number of financially sane, 10 figure tech acquisitions in the past five years. Most companies with the profitability and growth of Beats in its short existence are not looking to sell at all. Perhaps a public offering but that is a pain. The companies looking to sell are the ones bleeding cash and hoping to get a payday for their investors and founders. When your barely five year old business is spinning off nine figure profits, you don't really feel pressure to sell.
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Don't worry. When they announce a spin off line called Wheats by Iovine the unruly mob will put down their pitchforks and return their spools of rope to their barns.
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Okay I will ask Dr. Dre. One of the most succesful music producers of all time.
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have you had bad experience doing business with google? i know a translator agency that worked with google and didnt hear any complaints.
somehow i do think that you "weirdly fetishize about apple but there are lots of apple customers that get treated and have been treated absolutely horribly and their clueless support staff have never been anything but a waste of minutes for me personally.
Apple gets:
- A music subscription service without having to create one from scratch to integrate into the iTunes ecosystem.
- Iovine's contacts
- The Monster patents (that went from Monster to Beats and now to Apple). Everything from headphone tech to music subscription tech is there.
- Dre's Beats cans (which were developed from tech totally made/patented by Monster). Beats are garbage but maybe Apple could turn them into something good.
- Apple's own MTV/Rage styled music video TV channel possibly?
Who knows what else? Worth 3 Bees? I dunno. Probably not, but Apple think it's worth that.
Its a shame all the sensible posts come towards the end of the thread.
All these "up voted" posts at the beginning are embarrassing.
Yeah and since this deal is probably around 10-15 times profit it is a great deal. So yeah you had to correct the people who were confusing revenue, you still didn't have a valid point because a 15x earnings multiple is a good deal.
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I am pretty sure if you asked Tim Cook this directly he would politely tell you that your bigotry is not appreciated and they don't want you as a customer.
Apple has fired you as a customer. They do not approve of you any longer buying their products.
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The source is how much money the principles have made as recently as last year. Dre earned about 100 million dollars last year with the bulk of that coming from Beats profits. Given his ownership stake it is fairly easy to work out the numbers. By the way the 15 P/E ratio is a hyper conservative estimation. It is likely lower than that.
All of this information is easily found in one google search. The first time the story was reported it was pretty easy to get an overall picture of Beats based on published information. If you do the math based on 2013 the p/e is closer to 10.
Excellent. What a great guy to add to the company: a thug, murderer, gangsta who promotes violence against police officers.
But, they made SURE that a cannabis growing app was pulled right away for being indecent. WOW. What a sham.
But, they made SURE that a cannabis growing app was pulled right away for being indecent. WOW. What a sham.
For one Beats wasn't trying to sell their highly succesful business. It wasn't in play. Seems like personal relationships lead to this deal being made.
Are you really asking why the people who paid three billion for nest did not see this great deal sitting there and go after it? I think that kind of answers itself. When it was first reported many refused to believe it was even possible.
Not to mention the deal doesn't make nearly as much sense for google, other than it being a worthwhile financial investment. Something Google does not worry much about.
Slap an Apple logo on them and the job is done.
Just like people gladly pay more for the markup for Apple rechargeable batteries even though they are just Eneloops in a different wrapper, the majority of Apple consumers now look only for the logo. They don't care what item it's on.
still no desire to join a subscription music service. call me old fashioned, but i would rather own my music
3rd - I never said innovation only occurs in the USA
4th -Your the ignorant one who bashed the USA for hiring a high school graduate (a highly successfully one at that).
I think this is one of the issues. Great for Apple. But I'd rather people buy Apple because it's good or because they want it for X feature, and not just see the Apple and buy cause it's Apple.
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Maybe an easier start would have been by just introducing iTunes Radio somewhere outside the U.S. or Canada...
Australia has it now. Has for a while now. I've used it.
Beats headphones for free with the new iPhone 6 ? (...Who said that...)
I agree, that would be nice
I agree, that would be nice
Cook: "Sorry Dre! I can't approve your leave request for Friday and Monday. For the amount of money I paid you I need you in your cubicle at least 60 hours a week."