Critics claim Apple has failed to come up
with any game-changing devices since introducing the iPad in 2010, settling
instead for upgrades and improvements on its existing products. Now, word has
filtered out that Apple is thinking about paying $3.2 billion to purchase Beats
Audio, bringing a new round of financial and tech critics out of the woodwork.
Since Apple has people who could develop
great headphones and Beats Audio’s streaming music service hasn’t made that big
of a dent in similar services, such as Pandora or Spotify, many critics wonder
just what the heck is Apple thinking. Tech journalist Sean Hollister may have an
answer in The Verge,
an online tech and media publication.
“Apple’s modus operandi has always been to
acquire firms that help it build things,” Hollister wrote. “Do you remember
SoundJam MP? P.A. Semi? How about C3 Technologies? Probably not, because Apple
ground their bones to make its bread. Apple baked their technology and talent
into iTunes, the Apple iPhone processor, and Apple Maps, respectively.”
Wearable technology is an area Apple has
been eyeing for some time, if you believe all the rumors of an impending iWatch.
At the same time, nothing has resonated with consumers quite like Beats. The
headphone brand has become a status symbol, worn by star athletes and
celebrities and desired by teens and college students. In fact, the spring 2014
PiperJaffray survey found 46% of teens identified Beats as the headphone brand they’d like to
purchase.
Apple’s particular genius has been the
ability to take a product and turn it into something much better. Beats
provides Apple with a product it can improve on that already has “celebrity
cachet,” according to Hollister.
“My hunch is that if Apple is buying Beats,
it’s because Apple is ready to announce the iWatch,” he wrote. “It just needs
[Beats co-founders] Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine to wear one. Then, Apple would be
doing something totally in character, something not surprising at all: buying
the last key piece it needs for a technology that could change the world.”
