The European Commission has approved Apple’s $3 billion acquisition of Beats Electronics and Beats Music. The commission felt comfortable that the merger “did not raise concerns because the combined (headphone) market share of Apple and Beats Electronics is low.”
That might sound like an odd thing to say about Apple, but the EU pointed out that after buying Beats, it would still have Bose, Sennheiser, Sony and other competitors in the sector. As a result, Apple/Beats would be far from a headphone monopoly, which was the EU’s main concern.
Although the purchase still needs to be OK’ed in the U.S., it is expected that U.S. regulators will give their approval to the deal. Likely just in time for Apple to take over a legal battle against Bose, who just sued Beats over its noise-canceling patents.
