Apple Cuts The Price Of The Beats Deal, Says The NY Post

Apple has cut the price its going to pay for Beats, Claire Atkinson at The New York Post reports.

Instead of paying $3.2 billion, as was initially reported, it will pay $3 billion, says Atkinson. "Apple hadn't even begun its due diligence process when news of the number came out," a source close to the negotiations tells Atkinson.

She says the deal will be announced this week. Beats founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre are expected to be at Apple's developer conference, WWDC, next week.

Apple has not spoken about the acquisition at all, but tonight, Eddy Cue, who runs iTunes will be on stage at Code Conference. We expect him to be asked about it. We also expect him to be evasive, but maybe he'll says something interesting.

Apple is reportedly interested in Beats for three reasons: It gets a high-margin headphone business, it gets a streaming music service, and it gets Iovine, who is a pretty sharp executive, to run its content strategy.