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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.
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.