Apple is planning to acquire Beats Electronics for an estimated $3.2 billion, according to a new report.
The deal for the headphone maker founded by Jimmy Iovine and Dr Dre would represent Apple’s biggest acquisition yet.
The Financial Times is carrying claims that Apple could complete the massive acquisition very soon, with an announcement to that effect coming as early as next week. However, there are still said to be details to iron out.
Though Apple is one of the most cash-rich companies around, it is not in the habit of making such large company purchases. Rather, the company tends to make numerous smaller acquisitions of promising start-ups, usually for a single specific technical feature that Apple wants to assimilate.
Beats, of course, is one of the biggest names in headphone hardware, which would have obvious benefits for Apple’s iPhone range. Of course, having Beats on board did little for HTC when it bought half of the company in 2011.
The failure of that particularly mobile partnership caused Beats to start buying back HTC’s shares just a year later.
Beats also launched its own subscription streaming music service, Beats Music, earlier this year. With downloads of traditional MP3 tracks through iTunes stalling, Apple could be looking for a way into the competitive streaming market currently dominated by Spotify.
It’s worth remembering that back in March 2013, Apple and Beats were said to be working on a collaborative music-streaming service. Nothing materialised, and Beats went on to launch Beats Music alone, but there was evidently an interest in Beats from Apple at that point.
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