My Headphones Saved My Long-Term Profitability

It's been in the news for about a week now: Apple is thinking about buying Beats Electronics, the headphone and speaker company started by Dr. Dre. So that could lead to another in my series of things the teenage me would never believe:

Things the Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #13:

One of the guys from NWA will make billions selling a company to Apple.
 
Wait, that one would have to be preceded by another:

Things the Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #12.5:

Oh, and yes, Apple is not only still in business, their best days are still ahead of them.

But back to Beats. Many people, including me, are wondering how this makes sense. The reasons I've seen explaining the purchase are usually one of three things:

• Beats is successful, so of course Apple would want to buy it.
• Beats makes stylish technology, so it's just like Apple.
• Beats is really important to young people, so if you don't get it, them you must be old, and thus you can't possibly hope to understand, and you will be irredeemably old unless you join me in admiring the Emperor's clothes - I mean, youth culture

My answer to these arguments are, respectively:

• The Slap Chop is successful, but that doesn't mean Apple is going to buy it.
• Why would you buy a company that has the same strengths? That's redundant.
• Given how youth brands come and go, does it really make sense to put out that kind of money for a brand that young people currently like? If you disagree, my aforementioned teenage self has some Ocean Pacific stock to sell you.

This CNET article offers a possible explanation. Although, it does touch on each of the above arguments, it also make the point that Apple may want another brand that it can use to sell to people who aren't as enamoured with the Apple brand. That could be important if Apple is planning on jumping into wearable computing with both feet. So it's less about buying the youth market than it is about selling to different people with brands.

Having followed the auto industry for many years I can appreciate the need to sell Toyotas, Lexuses and Scions to different markets. But each of those brands was built from the ground up by Toyota, because that usually makes more sense than taking over an existing company. You'd think a company as good at brand building as Apple is, could just construct its own.