Apple has spent more than a year developing its own game controllers for the iPhone, and they will likely reach the market carrying Beats branding rather than an Apple logo.

Beats executives are leading both the product conception and the engineering. Two models appeared in macOS beta code earlier this month, identified as T6502 and T1057, with a D-pad, dual thumbsticks, shoulder buttons, analogue triggers and haptic motors between them, and one adding an accelerometer and gyroscope for motion controls.

Bloomberg's explanation is that Apple has increasingly been using Beats to experiment with new product categories and take a share of the third-party accessories market without putting certain products under the more premium Apple brand. The practical benefit is price. Beats products use cheaper materials and finishes, which lets Apple hit a mass-market price point that an Apple-branded controller could not without looking cheap.

There is a cultural fit too, since Beats reads younger and sits closer to gaming than Apple's own brand does. Apple bought Beats in 2014 for $3-billion, roughly R51-billion at today's rate, and has steadily widened it from headphones into charging cables, iPhone cases and other accessories. The company already sells third-party controllers from Backbone and SteelSeries through its own store, so it has watched the category's margins from the inside for years. No pricing, design or release timeline has been reported, and Bloomberg is clear the products may never launch.

MacRumors, whose reader found the original code references, reported Gurman's line that Apple sees this as a growing market and wants in. Engadget covered the strategic reading, that Beats lets Apple experiment in territory it is interested in while pricing below its own brand. Macworld notes Bloomberg names no sources and says simply "here's what I know", while pointing out his record has been accurate, and adds the blunter version of the cultural argument: Apple does not appear to get gaming.

This is a use for an acquisition that rarely gets discussed. Apple did not buy Beats only for headphones or for the streaming service that became Apple Music. It acquired a brand with different permissions. Beats can be cheaper, louder and aimed at a younger buyer without any of that reflecting on Apple, and if a controller flops, it is a Beats product that failed rather than an Apple one.

That is genuinely useful when entering a category where you have no credibility, and gaming is exactly that category for Apple. The lesson generalises below Apple's scale. A second brand lets you test pricing, audiences and categories your main brand cannot reach, and it absorbs the failure if the test goes badly. Worth thinking about if your main brand has been built on a premium position you now cannot move away from without damaging it.

The usual caution applies here: this is a report with no named sources, and unreleased Apple hardware sometimes stays unreleased.

You might also like our piece on the Apple link-out commission and what it takes from developers, OpenAI buying Glass Imaging to build its own devices, and Bending Spoons buying Miro at 92% below its peak.

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