音频设备厂商节拍电子公司（Beats Electronics）即将收购音乐订阅服务公司MOG？前者由于深得说唱明星德瑞博士和电音天后Lady Gaga等大名鼎鼎的流行音乐界人士青睐而广受欢迎。两家公司都没有确认这笔交易，但过去整整一周，网上有关这一消息的传闻却甚嚣尘上。本文将分析这笔交易的意义，主要是从Beats母公司宏达电（HTC）的角度出发。

    上述三家公司都称得上实力强大，名声响亮，但是每家公司在各自所处市场均被众多对手围攻，竞争可谓惨烈。如若强强联手，定能成功突围。

    总部位于台湾的手机厂商宏达电始创于1997年。2008年，由于它依托于谷歌（Google）安卓平台的手机外型时尚而声名鹊起，成为手机市场上令人生畏的强大对手。那时，虽然苹果公司（Apple）的iPhone在智能手机市场一枝独秀，宏达电手机依然凭借超大的屏幕和其他强大功能抢走了不少用户。它是出其不意赢得消费者芳心的黑马王子，2011年第三季度，无数消费者正翘首盼望新iPhone发布时，宏达电一度成为美国市场最大的智能手机厂商。显然，该公司的抱负远不止于手机。据报道，2011年夏天，它以3亿美元的价格收购了Beats的股票控制权。

    但是，宏达电很快从天堂坠回人间。三星（Samsung）和摩托罗拉（Motorola）等竞争对手在产品功能上紧紧咬住它不放，从质量和价格两方面则对其业务形成两面夹击。市场研究机构NPD集团的数据显示，苹果通过将iPhone向网络运营商斯普林特（Sprint）开放，侵吞了宏达电在斯普林特网络的大部分市场份额。

    此时，MOG也正处境艰难。在线音乐市场大概起源于2001年，彼时Napster的问世引发了一片混战。但是，十几年来，这一市场已逐渐形成了严格的层级系统。现在，通过流式服务，用户即可从计算机服务器访问大型音乐库，本人无需再拥有这些歌曲本身。MOG排在Rhapsody和Spotify之后，属于数字音乐服务领域的第三梯队。

    作为音乐博客网络，MOG创建于2005年，目录中共有1,400万首歌曲，通过手机收听歌曲的使用费为10美元/月，与竞争对手收费基本持平。美国唱片业协会（Recording Industry Association of America）表示，在2010年，也就是在线音乐服务业进行了数据统计的最近的年份，在线音乐服务业总收入约为2.01亿美元。市场研究机构ABI预计，到2016年，全球将有1.61亿名用户通过手机收听音乐。

    三家公司中，与宏达电和MOG相比，Beats的实力更为强大。该公司由嘻哈说唱音乐的老将德瑞博士和唱片业高管吉米•拉文创建于2008年。除了耳机业务之外，该公司还向其他企业销售“音乐压缩”技术。借助这一技术，音乐在被数字化成声音文件时能够保持原有的质感。Beats将该技术的许可权卖给了惠普（Hewlett-Packard）等公司，惠普在其高端笔记本电脑产品中就应用了这一音乐压缩技术。

    Is audio equipment maker Beats Electronics -- popularized by big-name celebrities like Dr. Dre and Lady Gaga -- on the verge of acquiring music subscription service MOG? Neither company would confirm a tie-up, but rumors to that effect have been gathering steam online all week. Here's why such a deal would make sense -- most of all for Beats parent HTC.

    All three have strong businesses with break-through brands, but each find itself in crowded markets with fierce competition. Bringing together could help them in the tussle.

    The Taiwan-based phone maker HTC, founded in 1997, seemingly came out of nowhere in 2008, breaking out as a formidable presence in the cellular market thanks to its slick handsets based on Google's (GOOG) Android platform. At a time when Apple's (AAPL) iPhone dominated the smartphone spotlight, HTC managed to pump out phones with larger screens and other glitzy features. It was a surprise darling with consumers too, briefly becoming the largest smartphone maker in the U.S. market in the third quarter of 2011 as shoppers waited for a new iPhone model to debut. In a sign of its ambitions beyond phones, HTC bought a controlling stake in Beats for a reported $300 million in the summer of that year.

    But HTC has come back down to earth. Competitors like Samsung and Motorola caught onto its playbook, squeezing its business on quality and price. Apple, meanwhile, hurt HTC when it introduced the iPhone to Sprint, eating up much of HTC's market share with the carrier, according to the NPD group, a research firm.

    MOG is a tough spot too. The online music market may have begun with the chaos of Napster in 2001, but it has developed a rigid caste system. Streaming services now allow users to access large music libraries from a computer server instead of owning the songs themselves. MOG is third-tier to Rhapsody and Spotify.

    Founded in 2005 as a music blog network, MOG has a catalog of 14 million songs and charges $10 a month for mobile access, roughly equivalent to its competitors. Online music subscription revenues were about $201 million in 2010, the most recent year the data is available, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Research firm ABI predicts 161 million subscribers worldwide will be accessing music through mobile phones by 2016.

    Of the three brands, Beats appears the strongest. Aside from its headphone operation, Beats, which was founded in 2008 by hip hop veteran Dr. Dre and record executive Jimmy Iovine, also sells its "music compression" technology to other businesses. This allows music to keep its crispness when it is digitized into sound files. Beats licenses this technology to companies like Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), which uses it in some of its high-end notebook lines.