As I mentioned below, Beats is first and foremost a fashionable hardware company for the mass markets, which Apple is too. In that sense they're very much in sync. As the dominant hardware company, why not acquire an up and coming fashionable hardware and accessories company? It happens in every other niche by the dominant company.
People in the tech community, and Hacker News more specifically, are having a hard time grasping this deal because they still see Apple's roots as a niche tech company of superior quality, whereas they've long moved to a mass market company. For a long time Apple was seen in a similar light as Beats; they charged a premium for commoditized product (personal computers with operating systems) and were heavily driven by marketing. Wether Hacker News wants to accept it or not, they're both predominantly mass market fashionable hardware companies that charge a premium for their ostensibly superior products. Beats has created a justifiably large brand, whether techies want to accept that fact or not.
On top of that, I assume that Samsung's announcement just last week that they're entering the "premium mobile audio" space had a lot of influence on Apple doing this deal. So far this seems to be overlooked by most pundits.
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As I mentioned below, Beats is first and foremost a fashionable hardware company for the mass markets, which Apple is too. In that sense they're very much in sync. As the dominant hardware company, why not acquire an up and coming fashionable hardware and accessories company? It happens in every other niche by the dominant company.
People in the tech community, and Hacker News more specifically, are having a hard time grasping this deal because they still see Apple's roots as a niche tech company of superior quality, whereas they've long moved to a mass market company. For a long time Apple was seen in a similar light as Beats; they charged a premium for commoditized product (personal computers with operating systems) and were heavily driven by marketing. Wether Hacker News wants to accept it or not, they're both predominantly mass market fashionable hardware companies that charge a premium for their ostensibly superior products. Beats has created a justifiably large brand, whether techies want to accept that fact or not.
On top of that, I assume that Samsung's announcement just last week that they're entering the "premium mobile audio" space had a lot of influence on Apple doing this deal. So far this seems to be overlooked by most pundits.