It took a bit longer than expected, but Apple announced today that it is indeed buying Beats—which makes headphones and a streaming-music service—for $3 billion, including $400 million that will vest over time.
Mary Meeker, legendary Morgan Stanley internet analyst and current partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, will deliver her annual State of the Internet presentation today at the Code conference in California. She has released her slides in advance. Here they are:
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Apple and Google—former allies that have spent the last several years engaged in corporate war—may now find an opportunity to work together again, at least for a while. The site for this possible détente is the nascent “smart home” market, which both companies are exploring with potentially complementary strategies.
As Hewlett-Packard’s long and messy turnaround continues, the tech company’s profit is increasingly coming from a familiar—but likely less-than-ideal—source: Printing.
With Microsoft’s latest attempt to merge the laptop and tablet into one, it’s worth checking in on Apple CEO Tim Cook’s prediction—now almost three years old, and rather bold-sounding at the time—that the tablet market would eventually grow larger than the PC market.
Apple is—supposedly—buying Beats, the headphones and streaming music company, for $3.2 billion. (The last news on this, a week ago, via Recode’s Peter Kafka, was that the deal would be finalized this week.) Assuming the deal closes, wishful thinking in the tech industry—where everyone’s always looking for more big, hungry bidders—is that this could mark the start of a trend of bigger acquisitions by Apple.
Microsoft has unveiled its latest tablet computer, the Surface Pro 3. The quick sell: It’s designed to replace both a tablet and laptop with one device—a relatively large tablet with a built-in stand, snap-on keyboard cover, and a fine-tipped stylus for drawing and writing.
