Since the moment HTC announced that they had purchased a controlling stake in Beats Audio for $300 million, I knew it was it shame and would fail. The fact that HTC believed that people would be fooled into thinking that a cellphone with a software equalizer would produce better sounds or the fact that it was even needed, was laughable. Yet HTC continued to promote their smartphones, even recently, as featuring the amazing Beats Audio, for unprecedented sound in a smartphone. In our recently review of the HTC one X, we pointed out that the Beat Audio was unnoticeable. Unless a user actually owns a pair of Beats Audio headphones (and not the crappy earbuds), they would likely not notice a difference.
So today, it didn’t surprise us that HTC has announced that they’ve sold back half of their controlling stake in Beat Audio back to the company. While HTC will still retain 25% of the company and the exclusive rights to use the “audio technology” in mobile devices, we may begin to see HTC scale back the amount of devices that feature Beats Audio, perhaps to see if it really makes a difference to consumers. After all, HTC has already stopped giving away free Beats Audio Earbuds with Beats Audio equipped smartphones, this was the next logical step.
Do you have a Beats Audio device by HTC? Tell us, do you notice a difference, especially without Beats Audio headphones?