Give Me Some Beats
Interesting article on the rise and success of Beats Headphones on The Verge website. Is the Company really worth in excess of $3 billion, the sum that Apple recently paid for it? Apple have, of course, acquired the brand, which also includes the recently launched streaming service.
As the article mentions, “They added a brand to the space that consumer really wanted to identify with”. Opinion varies greatly on the sound quality of their product but to create their brand they focused not just on the sound but on making that sound cool through branding. The boom in smartphones and tablets helped drive sales of premium headphones over $1 billion for the first time last year, of which Beats got a whopping 61 percent. And the most important factor when choosing which product to buy, according to an NPD study, was brand, with sound quality a close second.
In the last couple of years, other companies have launched similar products, often with celebrity endorsements, but none have managed to take significant market share.
You can read the whole article on The Verge here.
