Could This Explain Why Apple Spent More than $3 Billion to Buy Beats Headphones?

When Apple bought Beats from Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine for more than $3 billion USD, a lot of people thought that Apple CEO Tim Cook had lost his mind. Was the headphone market really worth that much? Did he realize how few subscribers the Beats streaming music service had?

We now know that Apple took Beats streaming and turned it into Apple Music, much in the same fashion they took a service called SoundJam and turned it into iTunes. And if you’ve been outside lately, you’ll have noticed that the popularity of Beats headphones hasn’t seemed to have waned any. But still, three billion dollars?

Forbes has put forth a new theory related to rumours that Apple is going to kill off the traditional headphone jack–a technology that’s been around since 1878 [sic]–on future iterations of its iOS devices. To plug in headphones, users will have to use the Lightning port.

This will have two effects: (1) All future purchasers of iOS devices will have to buy an adapter to make their existing headphones with their 3.5 mm jack work with their new toy; and (2) Existing Beats users will have to repurchase new Beats ‘phones for their new iPhones. It could be like when the record companies got everyone to buy their record collections again when they introduced the CD.

Interesting. This could turn out to be a genius move–if not something of a dick move for consumers. This is why the $10.3 million Tim Cook earned last year seems to be a bargain compared to how much record label executives got paid. Read the whole story here.