While Beats is now selling itself to Apple, the company tried this before with Taiwan’s HTC and it didn’t work out so well.
Jimmy Iovine Says Beats-HTC Partnership “Crashed and Burned”
“It was really a culture clash,” Iovine said.
Asa Mathat
“It was really a culture clash,” Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine said. “It crashed and burned. It didn’t work out.”
HTC bought half of Beats for $300 million in 2011, but ended up selling back half its stake in 2012 and the remainder last year.
Iovine said Beats was forced into a deal because its arrangement with then-partner Monster was ending and Beats itself only had five employees.
“We needed a partner,” Iovine said. “HTC was very interested and I always felt the only chance that music had was through the telephone.”
So why didn’t Apple do a deal then?
“The time wasn’t right,” Apple’s Eddy Cue said. “We were busy.”
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
