Ahead of today’s “major news announcement,” HTC announced a strategic partnership and investment with Beats Electronics, the company behind Beats by Dr. Dre.
“The HTC and Beats by Dr. Dre partnership is an opportunity for two world-class companies to redefine the smartphone industry and define the future,” said Jimmy Iovine, chairman of Beats by Dr. Dre and chairman and CEO of Interscope Geffen A&M Records, which is a division of Universal Music Group and a stakeholder in Beats. “For Beats by Dr. Dre, this represents a critical step in our continued mission to clean up the destruction of audio caused by the digital revolution and reengineer how sound is delivered, so the consumer feels the music the way that the artist intended.”
The two companies have already started working together and HTC expects to have a line of HTC phones with “high performance sound” available this fall.
Beats Electronics, which will operate autonomously, confirmed that existing business partnerships, including one with HP (which offers Beats Audio on some of its PCs and the HP TouchPad), will go on.