Really Mike Elgan?
I've never liked Mikes "theories" because most of them end up wrong. I had to stop listening to Tech News Today after Tom Merrit left because there was no common sense in his round table discussions.
Apple decided it needed to sell over-the-ear headphones and separately sell better earbuds than those that ship with the iPhone.
Apple spends $3 billion so they can make headphones? I'm pretty sure they could have bought a company that sold a better quality product for less. Beats are popular because of the Brand they have established, not because the product is awesome.
Apple reasoned that no matter what, they couldn't beat beats in the market.
Why would they need to? I don't think Apple has a huge vision to get into headphones. You stick apples name on the brand and they loose all of the Google and Windows people. Like it or not, Apple products sell to Apple fans. If they want to get non-apple people to buy their products, they need a new, younger brand image. Beats provides this. If anything, Apple will brand their new wearable line up as beats to sell to non-apple fans along with iPhone fan boys. Which I am one.
Apple couldn't fathom the idea of having a minority market share in something as central to Apples identity as music hardware.
What? What music hardware? The iPod? The thing that's had plummeting sales for the last half a decade? Maybe he means the AppleTV? The side project Apple doesn't care enough about to allow developers on it or improve the hardware so it's not slow as snails trying to race? Both of these items already have minority market share in the music device industry. Both of which have the sole purpose of playing content from iTunes.
Apple has the iOS devices now, which tunnel traffic into the iTunes stores, but I'm pretty sure they sell more in the App Store than they do in the iTunes Store. Apple has hardware that spread across a wide range of market shares. All of which in some way tie back to iTunes. Minority market share in the headphones space isn't their concern. They were never in that market to begin with.
Apple bought Beats to prevent the company from being perceived as a loser in a major music hardware category.
Sigh. They would be considered a loser because they never entered the headphone market? Pretty sure that wasn't their concern. So Beats bringing in $1B a year (not sure if it's revenue or profit) but Apple brings that in almost weekly now-a-days. They didn't buy them to get into a headphone market and make $1B per year. They wanted the brand and executive talent.
No matter what Apple will dominate the market
Doubtful, Beats will dominate. Apple will probably not get involved. They wanted the executives for record deals and getting Apple solid content deals for iTunes. The play was a longevity play. They wanted the brand, not the product and they wanted the executives. Pure and simple. It's well known that Apple is trying to beef up their store in an effort to fight off other streaming services. Bringing two extremely credible people in the music industry into Apple will help iTunes secure better content deals. It's about growing their iTunes Store and associating it with a hip young brand. Not selling headphones.
So I have resumed ignoring Elgan and his posts. There's this post, then his push that Google+ is the future of blogging and his push that people should give up privacy and just accept that Google glass users taking pictures of them when ever they want is acceptable. His credibility with me has pretty much fell off the face of earth.