This - I bought AT headphones (c£150) at Christmas, and they're astonishing. I had a listen to some Beats 'phones in the apple store (£279) last time I was getting a repair done, and they were astonishingly bad - fuzzy, tinny high end, massive overbearing bass.

But - from an Apple perspective, they're not buying just the headphones tech, but the manufacturing capacity as well, I'd assume.