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A rumour has emerged that Dr. Dre wants to end his partnership with smartphone maker HTC.
Geeky-gadgets.com reports that the partnership between Beats by Dr. Dre – which is headed by the rapper – and HTC is coming to an end.
Rumour has it that Dr. Dre wants to buy out HTC’s remaining stake in the company, which would allow Beats to bring in new investment partners and expand its range.
If HTC was ditched by the audio electronics firm this would be yet another blow for the flailing company.
Back in March, it revealed its lowest sales since 2010, with sales for the month of February falling by nearly 44 per cent. Around the same time, Gartner reported that HTC had barely kept its place in the top-ten rankings for mobile phones in Q4 2012.
In May, HTC announced that it was closing its movie store ‘Watch’ in a number of countries including Italy, Spain and Norway. In the same month, a number of staff left the company, with one – Eric Lin – taking to twitter to say: “To all my friends still at @HTC – just quit. leave now. it’s tough to do, but you’ll be so much happier, I swear.”
All this news hasn’t left HTC in the best light. In an attempt to scrape back some of the credibility the firm once had, it did the only thing a giant tech company haemorrhaging money can do…it spent $1 billion to get Robert Downey Jr to mumble really fast while wearing an array of glasses…for two years.
