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Business News Digital
Apple in talks to buy Beats Electronics, says FT
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 9 May 2014
Apple is in negotiations to buy Beats Electronics, the parent company of the Beats headphones brand and Beats Music streaming service, for $3.2 billion, according to a report in The Financial Times.
Sources told the newspaper that the deal could be announced as early as next week, coming just a month after Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the company was “on the prowl” for acquisitions.
A deal like this would make sense for a number of reasons. For one thing, while Beats headphones have many detractors, the hate for them doesn’t even come close to that for Apple’s proprietary earbuds.
Also, as streaming grows and the download market begins to stall, there has been much speculation about how Apple might update its iTunes software to counter this. Its entry into the streaming market with iTunes Radio has not gained the traction it had hoped. Purchasing a functioning streaming service, with a growing userbase (despite some questions over the speed of that growth) could be a god move. Although, obviously, it’s not a foregone conclusion that Beats would be pulled into iTunes.
