Those overpriced and heinous looking headphones that all the kids seem to be wearing these days are made by a company called Beats. HTC, looking to associate themselves with someone cool, decided to buy a significant chunk of Beats a few years ago. They then etched the Beats logo on the back of their phones for a while, and also played around with the equalizer settings so their phones had more bass, because kids sure do love that dubstep, don’t they?
Unfortunately, HTC is a really bad situation right now. They’re facing component shortages for the UltraPixel camera, the metal bodies for the One Mini, and rumor has it they can’t even get Qualcomm to sell them a few Snapdragon 800 chips. What should a company like HTC do in a situation like theirs? Hoard as much money as possible, which means selling their stake in Beats.
According to Bloomberg, HTC is now officially Beat-less, and that’s earned them a cool $256 million. Sounds like a lot, but let’s assume for a moment that an average HTC phone earns the company $400. The Beats sale is the equivalent of 640,000 phones. Not such a big number now is it?
