Beats by Dre Supposedly Looking to End HTC Partnership

dgstorm

Editor in Chief
Staff member
Premium Member
Joined
Dec 30, 2010
Messages
10,992
Reaction score
3,961
Location
Austin, TX
no-htc-for-beats-by-dre.jpeg

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the Beats by Dr. Dre Company may be planning to dump HTC. If you remember way back in 2011, HTC actually actually bought a 50.1% stake in the company. Then in 2012, when things started really going downhill for HTC, Beats by Dre purchased 25% of the company back from HTC. As it turns out, as bad as things have been going for HTC, the opposite has been true for Beats by Dre. They have grown their business from $200 Million in revenue in 2010 to $1 Billion in 2012. Beats by Dre now holds about 59% of the US premium headphone market.

It looks like Beats by Dre now wants to find a better partner, one that matches its success. To do that, they would have to purchase back their 25% stake at quite a bit more than the original $150 Million it was previously valued at. Still, it is something they can likely afford, and the cash would likely be more valuable to HTC right now than the partnership.

For now this is just "insider intel," but it will be interesting to see how this drama unfolds. The question remains, "Was this partnership ever worthwhile for either company from the get go?"

Source: AndroidPolice
 

jspradling7

Active Member
Joined
Apr 7, 2012
Messages
801
Reaction score
214
well_bye_zps38d50047.jpg


I wonder who they want to partner up with now. Googerola?
 

dezymond

Tech Support Mod
Staff member
Premium Member
Joined
Nov 11, 2009
Messages
12,049
Reaction score
1,479
Location
Bay Area, California
Current Phone Model
Google Pixel
Now is it going to be Moto or Sammy? Either way I think it's a smarter move by Dre.
 

pc747

Regular Member
Rescue Squad
Joined
Dec 23, 2009
Messages
25,489
Reaction score
6,865
Think HTC and Beats were looking to try and capitalize on the urban market, the people who appeal most to the beats brand. Just look at one of the first commercials they put out.
[video=youtube;JN00eLZkRvY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN00eLZkRvY[/video]

The reality is that they didnt advertise strong enough in that area and HTC is not going to just advertise a phone to one area plus I think HTC struggled with trying to find their identity. This partnership could have been a stronger partnership but neither wanted to put in the leg work to truly capitalize off it and as a result they are not truly getting in the revenue to reflect that. Though I will say that Beats should hold off trying to jump the ship as people are starting to gravitate to the htc one and the beats brand is starting to slowly reach the urban market. HTC needs to put out another successful HTC one "like" device and push advertisement in to key movies and music videos.
 

johnomaz

Silver Member
Joined
Jul 12, 2010
Messages
3,187
Reaction score
633
Location
Central Valley, California
Current Phone Model
Google Pixel 2XL
Beats Audio is just an EQ. Its been shown that products with Beats built in tend to have a very flat normal EQ and then an EQ with the highs and lows boosted up quite a bit. They intentionally make the sound with beats turned off sound bad so theirs sounds better no matter what. Its just a gimmick and has been put in ROMs already since its just an EQ. No real big loss.
 

dezymond

Tech Support Mod
Staff member
Premium Member
Joined
Nov 11, 2009
Messages
12,049
Reaction score
1,479
Location
Bay Area, California
Current Phone Model
Google Pixel
Beats Audio is just an EQ. Its been shown that products with Beats built in tend to have a very flat normal EQ and then an EQ with the highs and lows boosted up quite a bit. They intentionally make the sound with beats turned off sound bad so theirs sounds better no matter what. Its just a gimmick and has been put in ROMs already since its just an EQ. No real big loss.
The average consumer doesn't know this. They see the Beats name and associate it with high quality, again this is the average consumer. Audiophiles and phone savvy consumers know that Beats is just an EQ or that there are other higher quality lesser known brands out there.
 

kodiak799

Gold Member
Joined
Feb 20, 2010
Messages
6,146
Reaction score
827
The average consumer doesn't know this. They see the Beats name and associate it with high quality, again this is the average consumer. Audiophiles and phone savvy consumers know that Beats is just an EQ or that there are other higher quality lesser known brands out there.

Yeah, but what about those uncomfortable headphones that wouldn't fit in your ear that came with the Rezound? Didn't think about that did ya! :)
 

MissionImprobable

Silver Member
Joined
Sep 5, 2011
Messages
2,040
Reaction score
142
It's all about marketing. HTC failed here. I run into so many people who buy into the Beats hype and think they're getting good audio quality. Not to mention knowing that the over-the-ear sets are poorly designed and definitely prone to breaking. Regardless, people buy them and HTC had a marketable gimmick that they failed to capitalize on.

That said, who needs their horrid EQ? On-board mixing FTW!
 

dezymond

Tech Support Mod
Staff member
Premium Member
Joined
Nov 11, 2009
Messages
12,049
Reaction score
1,479
Location
Bay Area, California
Current Phone Model
Google Pixel
Yeah, but what about those uncomfortable headphones that wouldn't fit in your ear that came with the Rezound? Didn't think about that did ya! :)
Same principle, those were Beats earbuds right? Sure those things were probably prone to breaking, but it's assumed that "hey they're Beats so they must be built well".

The general consumer sees Beats as a high quality brand. What they don't know without researching is that there are lesser known brands and less expensive brands that have the same sound quality, and many better, than Beats. Beats is sought after because of marketing. Kids see their favorite artists supporting Beats and in turn they want to support it. Ask any audiophile, and I can almost guarantee you they think Beats is way overrated and highly overpriced.
 

pc747

Regular Member
Rescue Squad
Joined
Dec 23, 2009
Messages
25,489
Reaction score
6,865
It's all about marketing. HTC failed here. I run into so many people who buy into the Beats hype and think they're getting good audio quality. Not to mention knowing that the over-the-ear sets are poorly designed and definitely prone to breaking. Regardless, people buy them and HTC had a marketable gimmick that they failed to capitalize on.

That said, who needs their horrid EQ? On-board mixing FTW!


Exactly. Place the phone in the right music video or movie and they have a market. HTC the past few years seem to have no direction and the products showed that.
 

kodiak799

Gold Member
Joined
Feb 20, 2010
Messages
6,146
Reaction score
827
Same principle, those were Beats earbuds right? Sure those things were probably prone to breaking, but it's assumed that "hey they're Beats so they must be built well".

Marginally better sound than my Sony BT earbuds that I paid $100 for 4 years ago. But the Beats fit was terrible, wouldn't stay in my ear unless I wedged them in there in an uncomfortable way, and then if I moved around a little they'd come loose and fall out again.

Still, to have gotten those Beats earbuds for free must have cost HTC an extra $50 per Rezound that they struggled to sell because of poor marketing, anyway. Why can't HTC make money? Well the Beats deal is a good example, and then they paid Robert Downey Jr. $10M to make commercials.
 

pc747

Regular Member
Rescue Squad
Joined
Dec 23, 2009
Messages
25,489
Reaction score
6,865
Same principle, those were Beats earbuds right? Sure those things were probably prone to breaking, but it's assumed that "hey they're Beats so they must be built well".

The general consumer sees Beats as a high quality brand. What they don't know without researching is that there are lesser known brands and less expensive brands that have the same sound quality, and many better, than Beats. Beats is sought after because of marketing. Kids see their favorite artists supporting Beats and in turn they want to support it. Ask any audiophile, and I can almost guarantee you they think Beats is way overrated and highly overpriced.


Had a rezound and those earbuds might as well been skull candies with the beats logo on it. Compared to the actual beats earbuds you could tell they were no where near being beats quality. People were dubbed (including me at first) thinking they got a $100 pair of "quality" ear buds when the only thing they got that was quality (or somewhat) was the beats pouch the earbuds came in. They basically took a bottle of evian (aka naive) and put tap water in it and handed to us and we gladly paid the price for it.
 

FoxKat

Premium Member
Premium Member
Joined
Apr 2, 2010
Messages
14,651
Reaction score
4,703
Location
Pennsylvania
Current Phone Model
Droid Turbo 2 & Galaxy S7
The average consumer doesn't know this. They see the Beats name and associate it with high quality, again this is the average consumer. Audiophiles and phone savvy consumers know that Beats is just an EQ or that there are other higher quality lesser known brands out there.

Beats Audio is just an EQ. Its been shown that products with Beats built in tend to have a very flat normal EQ and then an EQ with the highs and lows boosted up quite a bit. They intentionally make the sound with beats turned off sound bad so theirs sounds better no matter what. Its just a gimmick and has been put in ROMs already since its just an EQ. No real big loss.

It's all about marketing. HTC failed here. I run into so many people who buy into the Beats hype and think they're getting good audio quality. Not to mention knowing that the over-the-ear sets are poorly designed and definitely prone to breaking. Regardless, people buy them and HTC had a marketable gimmick that they failed to capitalize on.

That said, who needs their horrid EQ? On-board mixing FTW!

The general consumer sees Beats as a high quality brand. What they don't know without researching is that there are lesser known brands and less expensive brands that have the same sound quality, and many better, than Beats. Beats is sought after because of marketing. Kids see their favorite artists supporting Beats and in turn they want to support it. Ask any audiophile, and I can almost guarantee you they think Beats is way overrated and highly overpriced.

Manufacturers of Audiophile equipment (receivers, tuners, amplifiers, pre-amplifiers, crossovers, speakers and all other form of Audiophile equipment), work tirelessly and spend enormous amounts of money and time and testing on R&D to reach a flat frequency response reproduction with as little distortion as attainable. The object is to reproduce the sound without any colorization from the equipment.

Truth is flat is how the engineers intended it to sound...flat is NORMAL, uncolored, pure. ANY DSP or "Beats" EQ is muddying up the sound. Injecting more bass, more treble is ARTIFICIAL and just totally distorting how it sounded to the ears of the engineer and the band. In other words, if the band and engineer had intended it to sound "Beats" then they'd have made it sound "Beats" and you wouldn't need "Beats" to sound that way. The moment I walk into a room and see the Bass and Treble of a stereo system turned up, I cringe. Overdriven Bass and Treble makes the sound horrible, difficult to listen to for long periods of time, and ruins the beauty and artistic value of the recording. Not every artist intended the Bass to be THUMPING, nor did they intend the Treble to be SHEARING. Subtle nuances of the recording are lost behind the distortion, entire tracks of audio become completely undetectable underneath all that mess.

As an audiophile I NEVER us ANY DSP or ANY artificial manipulation of the audio signal to produce anything other than the flat frequency response that was intended. My receiver (Denon AVR-3806...not even what I consider Audiophile, but cost $1,800 when I bought it in 2005), comes with a microphone and it produces frequency sweeps from each speaker, then does calculations around the room to determine acoustics and how they change the sound, then adjusts (equalizes) the sound to produce a flat frequency response across the entire spectrum and for the various listening positions around the room. My speakers (Klipsch KLF-20, KLF-C7, RW-35, RSW-15), are very low in distortion and to produce the sound with as little "color" as possible. They are designed to be efficient, so that you can drive them with low wattage, removing the need to turn up the amplifier into the ranges where distortion becomes a problem. 50% of movie theaters in the country use Klipsch for their speaker systems...there are reasons why.
 

xeene

Gold Member
Joined
Jun 28, 2010
Messages
3,479
Reaction score
1,004
Location
detroit, usa
comes with age. i used to listen to my music with high bass and treble when i was younger. now i prefer all settings be left in the middle.
 

mountainbikermark

Super Moderator
Staff member
Premium Member
Joined
Sep 5, 2010
Messages
7,544
Reaction score
4,012
I bought my Rezound in spite of it having Beats, not because. Gimmick sounds gimmick earbuds, gimmick advertising made me look at everything but the Rezound until I saw something on Phone Scoop about it. They touted it as a bigger Incredible 1 on steroids performance wise and mentioned nothing about the music player. This, in their opinion was a bad thing but fir me it was a good thing. They said it even fit in hand, though a bigger screen than the Inc, like the Inc 1. It was at that point I went to a Verizon store and bought mine because I wanted a phone as good as my Inc and fit my hands like my Inc.
I've used Beats only to show others that Power Amp works with Beats, both corded and Bluetooth.

Support Our Troops!!!
<><
A Rezound phone was used for this Tapatalk post
 
Top