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Samsung To Acquire Connected Car Firm Harman For $8 Billion (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Samsung has announced its plans to buy car tech company Harman International for $8 billion, marking the largest ever overseas deal by a South Korean firm. The electronics giant is to purchase the connected car systems company in a push to strengthen its efforts in emerging areas as its smartphone business slows. "Harman perfectly complements Samsung in terms of technologies, products and solutions, and joining forces is a natural extension of the automotive strategy we have been pursuing for some time," said Samsung CEO Oh-Hyun Kwon. Samsung confirmed that it will acquire the Connecticut-based company for $112 per share in cash, representing a premium of 28% based on Harman's closing stock price on 11th November.
Now we can have exploding cars!
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
So Samsung is bringing the white-hot excitement of the Note 7 to cars?
Frankly, my opinion of that company isn't too high these days....
Harman is whatever's left of various mergers or bankruptcies over the years. But everything I've seen in a car with their name on it was trashy quality car audio that was clearly designed to meet some arbitrarily low price point instead of actually caring that consumers had a true "premium" stereo.
EG. The Chrysler Crossfire came with a Harman-Becker radio and amp. The system used small subwoofers as the rear two speakers, and put full range components in the doors for the front. They didn't use a proper crossover in the circuit though, so everything sounded relatively muddy, or alternately, the rear subs barely ever fired if you adjusted it to be "treble heavy". Many of the Crossfire owners I know had these head units go bad on them too, over the years. So yeah, the cars are around 10-12 years old now -- but still, the stereo didn't last as long as the rest of the electronics in many of them.
I interviewed with Harman (I have a couple of ex-colleagues who work there) and Red Bend a while back. It's not a bad acquisition for Samsung, and will give them more than a foot in the door with automotive technologies. Some of the tech (particularly Red Bend's OTA update tech) is transferable to mobile devices, as well.
Talk about a dumb move. Harman is an overbloated company that basically only knows about audio. I seriously question Samsung's judgment. Samsung needs to get on the driverless car or sensor chip bandwagon,. They should be buying sensor companies such as Triquint (which makes automotive radar chips) or companies like Mobileye, Invensense, or Omnivision.
... systems (I wonder if they will still do home audio) will end up in the shitter.
It seems the article writer has no clue who Harmon is.
Harmon of Harmon Kardon, has been an audio company for decades, they have been buying up pro and commercial audio companies for a decade and last year acquired the AMX automation company.
Car stuff is one of the smallest parts of their business.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Harman is a pretty large company. Car audio is probably the smallest portion of their portfolio - they own JBL, Infinity, AKG, Lexicon, Mark Levinson, Crown, Studer, dbx, Revel, AMX and a few others - most of which are professional audio marques.
If anything, they are a larger player in the professional audio market than in the home, or car audio segments. They may spin things off but it would be pretty difficult as everything is pretty well integrated - the car audio divisions use speaker drivers from the home audio divisions, JBL uses electronics from Lexicon and Crown, along with headphones from AKG. Revel and Infinity use loudspeaker drivers from JBL. Studer consoles use electronics from dbx and Lexicon. dbx and Crown share electronics. Martin and AMX share controller modules.
First phones, then washing machines, and now cars.
So long, AKG, JBL.. it was nice knowing you and owning some of your products over the years.. and enjoying some behind-the-movie-screen* without ever seeing them.
I fear for the future of these two brands. They still offer genuine pro-quality performance and worry that Samsung won't respect the heritage of both names and encourage growth and R&D for improving the breed.
Both are the real deal, not audiophile voodoo. And for the record, plenty of audiophiles use AKG and JBL (And Klipsch, and old Altec speakers) instead of exotic boutique brands sprinkled with pixie dust backed up by dubious pseudo-science.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Just not all under the Harman brand. A lot of car navigation systems and radios are from Harman (Daimler, VW, Audi, Chrysler, etc)
Timo's Audio Software http://www.esseraudio.com
more than 50% of revenue
Timo's Audio Software http://www.esseraudio.com
not to buy the stereo upgrade
This is the path for a glowing success in Samsung's searing march ahead toward rekindling customer enthusiasm.
The really big one by Miller an Valasek which allowed remotely killing the car?
That was a Harman infotainment device.
so do i need to learn korean or what?
Samsung car suck, but have good aircons - number one deciding factor above everything else in Korea. Vladivostokians do appreciate it too.
Samsung SM5 with Nissan's turbo MR engine option, was, somehow, rather good
Samsung car suck, but have good aircons - number one deciding factor above everything else in Korea. Vladivostokians do appreciate that too.
Samsung SM5 with Nissan's turbo MR engine option, was, somehow, rather good
Wonder how many American jobs will be lost with this one....