Brian X Chen:

The Beats brand will remain separate from Apple’s, and Apple will offer both Beats’s streaming music service and premium headphones.

That’s the only thing I was wondering about. From the sound of the article Beats will remain it’s own brand, but very much will be a part of Apple instead of “independent from”. Also interesting is that Iovine and Dr. Dre don’t get a seat near Cook in the ranking, as they both report to Cue.

There will likely be even more words spilled about this, but I think this was one of those “it’s only a matter of time” situations. The Apple brand is, and likely always will be, one thing in consumer minds. To that end the only way for Apple to keep growing is to have sub brands.