$3 billion

Two '$3 billion' stories February 2014 - May 2014

Beats Music drops subscription price to $99 amidst Apple acquisition, Android app will stay around

Amidst the news that Apple is officially acquiring Beats for $3 billion, the service has announced a price cut. The subscription service now costs just $99 a year, down from $120. In addition, Beats users can now trial the service for free for fourteen days. The Beats Music app for Android also been updated to reflect these changes, alongside the usual performance tweak and bug fixes.

What’s New

Version 1.0.9:

* We’re stoked to announce that our no strings attached trial has been extended to 14 days to ensure everyone gets ample time to explore the full Beats Music experience.

* We’ve dropped the price of our yearly subscription to $99.99, down from $119.88.

* To top it off, we pushed tons of bug fixes so the whole experience runs smooth as silk.

Android users will also be happy to know that Apple has no plans to shut down the Android app just yet. In an interview with the Financial Times, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the Beats app for Android and Windows Phone will remain available.

Beats Music can be downloaded, for free, from Google Play.

Google tried to buy WhatsApp for $10B before Facebook succeeded with $19B purchase

Image: mobilegeeks.de

Update: TheInformation is reporting that Google was willing to beat Facebook’s $19 billion offer. More behind a paywall here.

Google tried to buy messaging service WhatsApp for $10B prior to Facebook’s successful $19B bid, according to two separate sources cited by Fortune. It has also been reported that Google had earlier offered WhatsApp “millions of dollars” simply for the right to be informed if WhatsApp received an offer from anyone else, an offer the messaging company turned down.

The size of the offers seem almost incredible given that the app is free and has no ads. Its entire revenue stream depends on users signing up to a 99c annual subscription after their first year, giving it – at present – a revenue ceiling of $450M a year.

But it’s likely that WhatsApp’s real appeal was it provides access to a core market for the future: mobile-first users in developing markets …
Expand
Expanding
Close