Jimmy Iovine Says Beats-HTC Partnership "Crashed and Burned"

While Beats is now selling itself to Apple, the company tried this before with Taiwan’s HTC and it didn’t work out so well.

HTC

“It was really a culture clash,” Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine said. “It crashed and burned. It didn’t work out.”

HTC bought half of Beats for $300 million in 2011, but ended up selling back half its stake in 2012 and the remainder last year.

Iovine said Beats was forced into a deal because its arrangement with then-partner Monster was ending and Beats itself only had five employees.

“We needed a partner,” Iovine said. “HTC was very interested and I always felt the only chance that music had was through the telephone.”

So why didn’t Apple do a deal then?

“The time wasn’t right,” Apple’s Eddy Cue said. “We were busy.”

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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