Posted in: Editorial/ Interviews, The Business of Hip Hop | No Comments | Posted on August 11, 2011 by dhaynes

As my cousin said: “Looks Like Dre pulling a 50″. According to the USA Today, The mobile phone maker HTC is investing in the Beats Enterprise.

via USATODAY

Here’s a nifty cellphone hookup: Taiwan-based smartphone maker HTC is investing $300 million in Beats Electronics, best known for its popular Beats By Dr. Dre headphones.

The two companies are collaborating on creating high-performance mobile sound products such as HTC devices with built-in Beats sound innovations as soon as this fall.

“The marriage of these two companies is very, very good. We are very good for each other,” says Jimmy Iovine, the chairman of Interscope Geffen A&M Records and co-founder of Beats By Dr. Dre with rapper/producer Dr. Dre. “With HTC’s innovation, technology and leadership, we feel we can really compete with anybody in this area.”

HTC and Beats began discussions earlier this year at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, he says.

Since Iovine and Dre established Beats Electronics in 2006, the company has released several lines of premium headphones with Monster Cable and incorporated Beats Audio into HP computers. Beats and Chrysler have teamed up on a sound system for the 2012 Chrysler 300S due this fall.

Meanwhile, HTC has become a rising player in the smartphone marketplace with models such as its HTC Evo 4G and HTC Thunderbolt Android-based phones. One of its latest, the Evo 3D captures photos and videos in 3-D and displays them in that format without the need for glasses.

Smartphone users are increasingly using their devices to listen to music and watch music videos, says HTC Corp. CEO Peter Chou. Both companies share “the co-belief that amazing audio is a very critical part of the mobile experience,” he says. “The power of the mobile device is making it so much easier to discover, find, buy and enjoy music anytime, anywhere. However, it’s a shame the sonic experience is not that great. “

The Beats team understands “music quality and (have) this vision to deliver studio song quality to the consumer,” Chou says.

Iovine sees mobile devices playing an even bigger part in music delivery. “In order for music to regain its foothold as an industry, music has to go to the telephone,” he says. “We want to make the music experience on telephones as great as it can possibly be. And HTC was the perfect partner.”