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Beats
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Beats
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| Founded | 2006 — Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine |
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| Acquired | 2014, $3 billion — Apple's largest acquisition |
| Products | Studio Pro · Solo 4 · Powerbeats Pro 2 · Fit Pro · Pill |
| Silicon | Apple chips (W1/H1 era) and Beats-branded chips |
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Beats is the headphone brand that made audio a fashion statement — Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine's 2006 bet that music culture would pay premium prices for bass and a lowercase b. Apple bought it in 2014 for $3 billion, its largest acquisition ever, taking the hardware brand and the Beats Music service whose team built Apple Music.
1 Position✎
Inside Apple, Beats runs as the ecosystem's second audio label: same silicon advantages (W- and H-series pairing, Find My), but with Android apps, USB-C before AirPods, colorways, and athlete-and-artist marketing AirPods would never wear. Powerbeats Pro 2 (2025) even beat AirPods to heart-rate sensing by months. Culturally the acquisition delivered exactly what it promised — Iovine's music-industry instincts inside Apple and the streaming pivot that became Apple Music.
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