While this makes little sense on the surface, I suspect the folks at Apple are far from stupid. There's likely a solid reason behind this move, and instead of doing the easy thing by saying "b-b-but their headphones are crap!", it'd be more productive to explore the underlying motives.<p>I actually think this is a smart move. Beats first and foremost is a <i>fashion</i> company. The majority don't buy Beats for sound quality, but for the style and image. I see people wearing Beats in all sorts of colors every day on the train. NBA players are seen sporting them at practice or in the locker room. It has become <i>the</i> fashion icon for audio-wear. In the context of Apple's recent fashion-binge with hires from Burberry and YSL, this move may provide further evidence of Apple creating/entering the wearable-tech fashion market.<p>This could also be a response to Apple losing ground in music streaming. Rdio, Spotify have become the default source of music for so many, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple has seen a hit to their music sales. They also botched social music up with Ping, which is an area the aforementioned services are doing pretty well in. Beats may have the connections, the brand and marketing capital, to help make Apple a formidable competitor in this area. But I read here yesterday that the Beats streaming service only has 200,000 low-quality subscribers (ie they joined because their phones came preloaded with the service), so I'm less inclined to believe Apple dropped 3.2 billion on them for this alone.<p>Maybe it's a combination of both, or for a different reason altogether. It's intriguing, nonetheless.