HTC Marches To a New Beat

摘要

A peek at Peter Chou's smartphone reveals an abundance of 70s and '80s easy-listening hits from the Bee Gees, the Eagles, and Lionel Ritchie. "No rap," says Chou, chief executive officer of Taiwan phonemaker HTC. In business, though, he is very much a fan of legendary hitmaker Dr. Dre. Chou bought his way into Dre's inner circle last year when HTC paid $300 million for a 51 percent stake in Beats Electronics, the maker of high-end audio gear founded by Dre and Interscope-Geffen-A&M Chairman Jimmy Iovine. "We don't care about the headphones," says Chou. Instead, Beats's technolo-gy-both hardware and software-will help make listening to music on an HTC smartphone a "unique and differentiated and awesome" experience, he says.