According to Martin Fichter, product executive at HTC, we will probably not see Beat by Dr Dre headphones included with an HTC phone for quite some time. Since HTC announced its partnership with Beats Audio last summer, HTC has released three phones which were paired with a set of Beats headphones (HTC Sensation XE, Sensation XL and Rezound). While the HTC Sensation XE was a limited edition handset, the Sensation XL and Rezound were pitched as flagship devices, but neither of them really caught the attention of customers as HTC expected them to.
“An accessory like the headphone doesn’t factor in when someone is buying a smartphone,” Martin Fichter, an HTC product executive, told CNET. “If they want a Beats headphone, they’ll buy it directly.”
The underlying issue is that Beats headphones add additional cost to the phone while the customers really don’t perceive them as adding any real extra value. There will always be a handful of customers who would buy devices which include Beats headphones because they want a complete music experience, but the majority of customers will simply compare the handset’s price to that of the competition and go with whichever one had a better value for them.
We’re not that surprised to see HTC move away from including Beats headphones with their handsets, but we certainly didn’t expect them to make the decision so soon. The HTC Rezound is an amazing phone which was essentially pushed to the side by Verizon when they chose to promote the DROID RAZR over the holiday season even though ti is an inferior device.
HTC isn’t going to be dropping Beats Audio any time soon. Beats integration into their new phones will be a standard feature which helps separate HTC’s phones from the competition. If HTC and Beats really want to deliver value to their consumers, they could probably work about a promotion or coupon deal which would give new HTC handset owners $20-50 off the price of a pair of Beats headphones. It’s not the same as including them in the box, but if does allow consumers to make their purchasing decision based on the phone while offering them additional value if they choose to take advantage of it.
What do you think of HTC’s decision to not include Beats headphone with their handsets?
Source: CNET
I got my sensation XE last November, and although the inclusion of the iBeats headphones didn’t sway my decision to make the purchase, it did get me interested. After getting the phone and trying out the headphones, I didn’t like them at all. They sound great (albeit a little too much low end compared to the middle and high frequency sounds), but they are not comfortable, and are really heavy. I much prefer my Sennheiser CX880’s. With the included beats audio processing on the phone, the Sennheiser’s are fantastic. The beats sit in their little bag in a draw.
as long as they put in the Beats technology – software – then it’s all good, the headphones aren’t that important and only add unnecessary cost to the purchase
Beats headphone is much better than regular HTC headphones, the sound quality is awesome. If HTC will not include it, it wouldn’t be a good impression.
Personally, I wouldn’t want them included everytime even if I did like the Beats headphones (now that I have some). People tend to get a new phone every 6 month’s to 3 years, and tend to stick with the same brand too.
If you look after the headphones they last many years more than several phones will, that’s a lot of paid for headphones sitting around. Maybe HTC could have a more expensive ‘premium’ package that includes headphones and a case for those who want them.
What Wankers how cheap can you get? Release a beats audio phone with no beats earphones? Its like apple releasing an iphone with no Apple logo. Just changed from iphone to one x and i massively regret it. One x is plagued with problems.
That’s just great. I just purchased the Sensation XE Z715e a few days ago to replace my one year-old, HTC Incredible S but didn’t know about about this matter until now.
I’m not the kind that will rip open each and every plastic packaging inside the box as I’m still using the USB charger from my previous phone; therefore I assumed that the earbuds that came with the box was the Beats version.
While it’s not much of an issue (I prefer to use my Sony EX Monitor series earphones, which are really terrific), I’m wondering if I should have paid a lower price for my new phone since it was bundled with the regular HTC earphones.
I think HTC made a huge blunder investing so much money into the Beats brand, because the Beats Audio feature is merely software based and can be ported into almost any HTC phone.
One of my custom ROMs which I flashed into my previous Incredible S had the Beats Audio feature too; therefore it’s not like HTC spent their $300 million into developing a proprietary, hardware based DSP chip for Beats Audio.
Co-branding with Dr Dre can only get HTC so far – in the end it’s core technology and features that sell. Trivial features like expansion micro SD slots and user replaceable batteries are in fact, huge selling points. Samsung, being a memory chip manufacturer themselves knows this and wisely decided to endow their Galaxy S3 with expansion storage and a removable battery.
And that’s why I ended up buying the outdated Sensation XE instead of the new One X or the One S. Unfortunately for HTC, common sense isn’t common.