"With the magic of mobile devices, it is easier than ever to discover and buy new music," Chou told the website AllThingsD. "However, without great sound experience, it is a shame."  HTC's stock closed Thursday on a high note, defying the weak performance of the Taiwan Stock Exchange and seemingly reflecting an endorsement of the Beats deal from shareholders.  "We need to continue to innovate and have products that differentiate and make more of an emotional connection with the consumer," Chou told The New York Times.  What's not clear, however, is whether consumers are actually clamoring for better speakers in their gadgets.  We see plenty of people on the streets listening to music with headphones -- increasingly those made by Beats -- but rarely do people crank tunes from their phones' speakers. (Unless it's that irritating Katy Perry ringtone that's always going off in Starbucks.)  That probably has less to do with phones' subpar audio performance and more with the impracticality of listening to music in that way. For now, a sound maker built into a small gadget cannot come close to the quality of solid headphones or a standalone speaker system.  Besides, many music consumers are already used to the less-than-stellar sound quality of digital songs, whose files are usually compressed to make them download or stream faster.  Two years before the HTC deal, Hewlett-Packard similarly surmised that outstanding audio quality in its hardware devices could position them to consumers as superior products worthy of a price premium. So it signed a deal with Beats.  The computer giant said it sold 1 million Beats laptops during the first 16 months of the partnership. HP typically sells as many computers in about 16 days.
HTC is making a $300 million bet that people want cell phones capable of producing high-quality audio. But will it pay off?The Taiwan phone manufacturer said Thursday that it plans to acquire a