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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.
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.