If these reports are anything to go by, Apple might make history in the coming weeks with their biggest acquisition to date.
Yesterday, The Financial Times along with The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and Bloomberg, all reported on Apple’s rumoured plan to acquire popular headphone manufacturer and music streaming services company, Beats Electronics.
Of course, Beats Electronics – better known as Beats by Dr. Dre – is one of the world’s foremost music focused companies.
The company was founded back in 2006 by one of the world’s biggest rap stars, Dr. Dre and world famous music producer Jimmy Iovine. Together, the two music moguls elevated Beats Electronics to become a leader in the music device industry and firmly established the Beats by Dr. Dre headphones as a ‘must-have’ item for any music enthusiast.
Recently, the company also launched their own music streaming service, much ti the likes of Spotify and Pandora called Beats Music.
According to the various reports on the possible acquisition, Apple is set to fork out an unholy amount of money to get Beats in the bag. Apparently, Apple is looking at paying a whopping $3.2 billion to wholly own the company.
Should this acquisition come to fruition, it would be Apple’s largest acquisition in their 38-year history.
However, a $3 billion acquisition is not unheard of in the world of tech. Just in the last year, giant tech companies like Google and Facebook pushed the envelope when it came to acquisition price tags. Who can forget Facebook’s shock acquisition of WhatsApp for $19 billion (!) or their $3 billion offer to purchase Snapchat?
Google was also up there with their acquisition of of Nest for $3.2 billion.
Apple has not made a significant acquisition in a while. Their last big acquisition was that of Topsy in December of last year, for which the company paid $200 million.
Why would Apple be interested in Beats, you may ask? Well, considering the fact that iTunes and iTunes Radio are both very popular music services, it makes sense for the company to incorporate Beats’ success into that of iTunes, thus further elevating the reach and domination of Apple in the music industry.
As for the hardware part, Apple could very well use Beats’ design talent to help them develop wearable devices. As Apple has not really entered the wearable market a la Samsung and co, this could pose the perfect opportunity for them finally hit that mark.
However, these reports have not yet been confirmed (or denied, for that matter) by either Apple or Beats. Some sources claim that the official announcement could possibly be made next week; but as we know with these kind of rumours/reports, it’s not the real deal unless it comes straight from the horse’s mouth.
What are your thoughts on Apple’s supposed new venture?
Source: Mashable
