Report: Apple in Talks to Acquire Beats Headphone Company for $3.2 Billion

According to a report on the Financial Times moments ago, Apple is in final talks with headphone maker Beats to acquire the company outright, for the sum total of $3.2 billion. The deal, if truly struck, will be made public next week, according to “people familiar with the negotiations.”

If the acquisition is taking place, this would be a new record for Apple purchases, which given the company’s history, goes against their strong reluctance to make larger, showy purchases like this. Recently though, Apple CEO Tim Cook did say that his company is on the “prowl” to write checks worth writing, and absorbing a successful young company like Beats would be in line with that.

But how would this acquisition prove useful to Apple? Well, as a user technology company that defined a genre of music-listening devices, it makes sense that the company would want to bring technology like Beats headphones in-house. Apple already makes their own high quality, high-expense headphones, so merging their hardware with Beats’ certainly makes a lot of business sense.

We’ll update this post once/if we hear more.