Beats Wants to Buy Back HTC's Stake

[JMcEntegart]

Beats is looking to buy HTC's remaining share in the company and seek another investor.

Beats Wants to Buy Back HTC's Stake : Read more

 

[sykozis]

By the time "Beats Audio" is done with the music industry, they won't have anything to worry about because there won't be a music industry left.

 

[Shin-san]

Beats screwed over Monster, and now HTC

 

[nebun]

I don't see why people buy this...overpriced and heavy crap

 

[g-unit1111]

Monster sounds like a company you wouldn't want to do business with. I love my HTC One, it's one of the best phones I've ever had.

 

[teh_chem]

Seeing if I'm getting this straight... 2 years ago, HTC poured $300M of liquid cash into Beats in the form of a 50% stake in the company. Usually the company would take that money and use it to expand their business. Now Beats is either upset that HTC sold half their stake in the company, or otherwise is upset that HTC is not supplying even more capital to help Beats further expand. Isn't 2 years of working with $300M enough time to expand? HTC didn't post a stellar performance over the past year, with their profits down 80% from where they were a year ago. It's very reasonable to re-examine a cash-heavy investment like Beats, and figure out potentially better things to be doing with your money; especially if your profits are down that much.

I can't say I've ever listened to a set of beats speakers or headphones. But something about them makes me think that they can't possibly be worth $300 for a pair of headphones, any more than a $30 set of headphones.

 

[hp79]

I thought Beats was just a gimmick, and most products with Beats are just for branding, but on HTC One it really helps boosting internal speakers.

I see other manufactures adding audio enhancement on their line too. For example, I also have a Lenovo X230T which has Dolby enhancement, and it really helps enhance the internal speaker sound quality. That being said, I don't need Beats, as long as some kind of enhancement is done.

I would never buy a headphone though. That is overpriced. LOL

 

[southernshark]

Hopefully Google is their next partner because the sound on the Nexus 4 is absolute crap.

 

[acadia11]

Beats are base heavy garbage a true audiophile laughs at beats along with bose, put on some siesenhauser or shure phones and see what real quality ear and headphones sound like.

 

[martel80]

Beats headphones have terrible price-to-performance ratio. There are headphones that cost 1/3rd and perform better. People must be crazy to waste money just for the beats logo.

 

[Vorador2]

"Beats was launched in 2009 as part of an effort to improve the quality of audio products being sold today."

I cannot express how ironically amusing this sentence is to me.

 

[rantoc]

Indeed, part of the $300 deal was that HTC had exclusive rights to manufacture smartphones with Beats audio.

So Beats cant afford the final 150$ to but them out, seems like Beats business is indeed good =D. (Yupp - Should be millions but seems the editor missed that, and when proofreading seems to be non existent here nowadays....).

 

[d_kuhn]

They may not be good audio tech... but Beats has done a great job of marketing. I see them as a low end Bose... a lot of hype allowing them to get a higher price for their product than they normally would based on performance (not something that's going to make them popular around here... but I'm sure Wall Street loves them).

 

[warezme]

Beats audio is no more than an audio algorithm wrapped inside a brand. It is no different than what Creative Labs does with their brand except they weren't smart enough to target the hip crowd. There was a time you would purchase a laptop that was sold as having a Creative Labs audio when in fact there was no Creative Labs coprocessor. It was all an audio algorithm running on software via your main CPU. After lots of people complained the option quietly went away. I was one who complained and forced Dell to send me a hardware solution for false advertising. At least Beats is forced to have some built in processor to do the algorithms but it isn't magic or expensive. On cell phone like the One, (which I own), the processing would be trivial and even cheaper.

 

[ddpruitt]

Beats is the Monster Cable of the audio world, all flash no substance.