Apple Inc. plans to cut 200 jobs from Dr. Dre's Beats

Whenever an acquisition or a company takeover or buyout occurs, it’s not long before the pink slips start rolling in.
Apple’s acquisition of Beats means that now, some employees will find themselves in new positions with Apple for the long-term, or with a new company altogether. Bloomberg reports that Apple’s now shown 200 employees the fate of their positions long-term with the Cupertino.
Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said in a company statement that “We’re excited to have the Beats team join Apple, and we have extended job offers to every Beats employee. Because of some overlap in our operations, some offers are for a limited period and we’ll work hard during this time to find as many of these Beats employees as we can another permanent job within Apple.”
With Neumayr’s statement, however, Apple’s not guaranteeing that these 200 employees will get jobs – but rather that Apple will work as hard as it can to find jobs for these displaced employees who are mere casualties of a typical company acquisition. As for Beats Music’s Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre (Andre Young), they’ll retain positions within the company, seeing that Apple purchased their contracts before they expired.

The 200 jobs that’re being displaced with Apple are due to redundancies. Microsoft is no stranger to job displacements, as its Nokia mobile division acquisition has resulted in the termination of 18,000 jobs. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s said that the job reduction plan is due to redundancies in the company – two HR departments, for example. Not all Microsoft’s job cuts are from Nokia’s mobile division, but the majority are from Microsoft’s old Windows Phone archrival.
Apple purchased Beats Music for $3 billion earlier this summer. While Apple’s purchased a headphone line as well as an internet music subscription service, the company’s technology is incompatible with iTunes and requires some major Apple budget to overhaul it in the long-term.