Weekly Roundup: Forgot about Cook

Aaron Brethorst, May 10, 2014

Apple's buying Beats? For $3.2 billion? What?! It begs the question why Apple would be interested in purchasing a nascent streaming company instead of one of the bigger dogs, like Rdio or Spotify, but I'm sure Tim Cook et al have their reasons. Ostensibly the purchase price can't matter that much. So it must be something else. Beats also has a popular line of hardware, and two of the biggest names in music, Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre, who would undoubtedly come along with the acquisition.

Apple could certainly use a streaming music service, but it doesn't seem like that's worth three billion dollars. Apple could certainly use better headphones, but those don't seem to be worth three billion dollars either. Does Apple need a couple superstars of the music industry? Perhaps Tim Cook thinks they do.

I can't imagine Steve Jobs ever specifically seeking out 'star power' to head up Apple. Frankly, I think his ego was too big for that. But Tim Cook is not Steve Jobs, and seems to be perfectly happy bringing in people that he thinks are best equipped to handle specific verticals, regardless of how famous they may be. For instance, Angela Ahrendts has a much higher profile coming into Apple than Ron Johnson did.

All of this raises the question of who else Apple might bring in, or which other companies they may acquire.

It also means that I'll be incredibly disappointed if Dr. Dre isn't the Thursday night performer at WWDC.

Best,
Aaron


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Weekly Roundup

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