by The news over the last few days has been swirling with speculation about Apple’s possible acquisition of Beats Electronics, and most commentators assume that the Cupertino company wants to buy it for its pre-built music streaming service that’s similar to Spotify. But Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson believes that’s not the case. Instead, he states in an interview with Billboard, Apple primarily wants to secure Beats for the industry connections of co-founder Jimmy Iovine.
And get this — Isaacson believes Apple’s main interest is actually in video (which makes a bit of sense, considering the excitement over the changes to Apple TV in 2013). As the interview states, “[Isaacson] speculates that Cook wants Iovine to run Apple’s content business and help Apple launch the TV product that analysts have been gossiping about for years. The product has been held up because Apple can’t get all the content owners on board.”
Source: SteveJobs.fr
It makes some sense, considering Iovine’s history with the folks in Cupertino. Iovine, who has many connections in the fields of both video and music, was a key figure in the process of securing music labels for the launch of iTunes in 2002, and he tried to convince Apple to buy Universal Music Group in 2002. Just one year later, he was instrumental in the creation of the popular U2-themed iPod.
In Isaacson’s view, Iovine could be just want Apple needs to get its long-rumored “revolutionary” TV content delivery service off the ground. “Maybe Iovine has the charisma and connections to round up the networks the way he did the music labels in 2002, although ‘it’s a lot more complicated’ this time around,” says Isaacson in the interview.
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