Apple acquired Beats back in 2014, and it’s certainly been interesting to watch Apple’s varying decisions over the years. For the most part, the Beats brand has stayed completely intact. Beats Music was replaced with Apple Music, and the Beats 1 radio station on Apple Music was subsequently rebranded.
Obviously, Apple has continued to release new Beats headphones over the years. More recently, though, Apple has begun to do something very fascinating. It’s now positioning Beats as an accessory brand.
A lot of people may have missed this, but during the iPhone 16 launch, Apple did something a little peculiar. It released a new $49 hard plastic case. This wasn’t an Apple case though, and instead Beats made it.
It was actually a pretty decent case. I reviewed it, and liked it a fair bit. I just wish it wasn’t $49 for whats essentially just plastic, but Apple loves releasing premium-priced accessories, so I shouldn’t have been too surprised.
Apple even took it a step further by announcing additional colors and a new design for the Beats case for iPhone 16 back in December.
Now, according to MacRumors, Apple is preparing to launch new Beats charging cables. They’re apparently going to come in a number of colors, and there’ll be a few variants: USB-C to USB-C, USB-C to Lightning, and USB-A to USB-C.
This is pretty interesting, for two reasons:
- Apple has never made a USB-A to USB-C cable until now
- and, Apple has been pretty hesitant to openly releasing colored cables; though it does bundle colored cables with the 24″ iMac
These cables will apparently come in around $20 USD for a 5-foot variant, making it slightly cheaper than Apple’s offerings.
Since these cables aren’t out yet, I can’t say anything about their quality. However, I do personally think Apple’s new endeavor of releasing cheaper accessories under the Beats brand is quite fascinating.
Will this endeavor continue to evolve? Who knows. I do think a Beats-branded battery bank could be an interesting concept, for example, since Apple no longer sells their own.
Top comment by Caesarrr
I concur. I suspect that’s Apple’s avenue for releasing lower tier products, accessories & opening up the system a bit to grab non-Apple users to a Cupertino tier 2 experience then eventually graduate them to Apple’s ecosystem.
What do you think about Apple’s recent moves with Beats? Let us know in the comments.
My favorite Apple accessories on Amazon:
- Anker 25K Compact Power Bank with retractable cable
- MOFT Magnetic Wallet Stand, fits up to 3 cards
- AirTag 4-pack (on sale for 30% off!)
- Anker MagSafe 2-in-1 Wireless Charging Stand with Qi2
- AirPods Pro 2 (USB-C)
- SanDisk Extreme 2TB USB-C SSD, up to 1050MB/s
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