Samsung Acquires Masimo's Audio Business For $350 Million (engadget.com) 20
Harman International, a Samsung subsidiary, announced it is acquiring Masimo's consumer audio division for $350 million in cash. "The deal is expected to finalized by the end of 2025, though it's still subject to regulatory approvals," notes Engadget. From the report: Samsung purchased Harman International back in 2017 for $8 billion, though it allowed the company to operate as an independent subsidiary. Harman's brands include JBL, Harman Kardon, AKG, Mark Levinson, Arcam and Revel. If and when the acquisition pushes through, Masimo's audio brands under Sound United will be added to the list, including Bowers & Wilkins, Denon, Marantz and Polk Audio. [...]
As noted by The Verge, Samsung published a press release, where it briefly talked about the history of the brands it's acquiring. It mentioned some of Bowers & Wilkins' most iconic products, such as the Nautilus loudspeaker (pictured above) and its Zeppelin wireless speaker, as well as Denon's history as an early adopter of the CD player. Harman had a 60 percent market share in portable audio devices last year, and the company is looking to maintain that position with this purchase. Samsung also plans to apply the new brands' audio technologies to its smartphones, TVs, wireless earphones, soundbars and other devices in the future.
As noted by The Verge, Samsung published a press release, where it briefly talked about the history of the brands it's acquiring. It mentioned some of Bowers & Wilkins' most iconic products, such as the Nautilus loudspeaker (pictured above) and its Zeppelin wireless speaker, as well as Denon's history as an early adopter of the CD player. Harman had a 60 percent market share in portable audio devices last year, and the company is looking to maintain that position with this purchase. Samsung also plans to apply the new brands' audio technologies to its smartphones, TVs, wireless earphones, soundbars and other devices in the future.
Capitalism is dead. (Score:3)
In the end it will be like a company town, except it's the company planet.
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Looks like I'll be keeping my existing Bowers & Wilkins setup for a long time, since the enshittification and cost cutting will be coming along shortly after this deal closes.
None of this is good news for the market in the long term. This is all headed towards a simplified product catalog of diluted quality available from many brands, just like any other market that experiences extreme consolidation and removal of competition.
Re:Capitalism is dead. (Score:4, Interesting)
Looks like I'll be keeping my existing Bowers & Wilkins setup for a long time, since the enshittification and cost cutting will be coming along shortly after this deal closes.
On the one side, what makes you think enshittification will result from this. Samsung also have owned Harman for nearly a decade now which in turn bought Revel nearly a quarter of a century ago. Yet they remain some of the best speakers you can get in their price category. Samsung have shown to take a very hands off approach to their subsidiaries. There's been virtually no influence on their other speaker brands.
That said B&W have been shit for a long time already. Forget Samsung, they were briefly owned by a former Facebook tech-bro who tried to turn them into a home assistant company backed by VC funding from the Formation group (which is why B&W have a product called Formation). They were competitive 20 years ago, but these days their speakers are insanely overpriced and not worth the money.
Keep your B&Ws, especially older ones were great. But if you're in the market for something new, I highly recommend you look elsewhere. ... errr. like to Revel.
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B&W have always had shitty frequency response. Never great, except for the finishes. My friend worked for them during the VC phase. I kind of rolled my eyes at all he said then smiled at him.
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Indeed they've always been a bit on the bright side, but that is perfectly acceptable back when e.g. the 805D speaker cost 3,000EUR (which it did back in the early 2000s). But these days you get the same shitty response from the 805D4 at an eyewatering 10,000EUR. That changes things a lot. They are simply no longer competitive, in the past they were at least batting within their price average.
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Your B&Ws are shit with shiny boxes. You screwed yourself when you bought them.
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You didn't ask when he bought them. B&Ws especially before the 2000s used to be good. Not sounding better than now, but they produced that sound at a quarter of the price point. In the 80s/90s they were actually quite exceptional and competed well in the top tier.
These days I wouldn't recommend them to anyone.
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Errr no capitalism is not dead. This *IS* capitalism. Capitalism in its raw form has a single monopoly as the only stable end solution at the core. Capitalism by definition is an attempt through competition to eliminate competitors. Competition is a an unstable condition in this concept.
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Sort of like a false vacuum in a universe, except there are an infinite number of metastable states; each one shittier than the one which proceeded it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum
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Indeed, but metastable is not completely stable. All it takes is a small perturbation such as a CEO doing something stupid and we're on to the next consolidation of power in the market which is my point. These companies were once good in their own right, and they fell out of that metastable point. This is capitalism in its raw form.
Things like the FTC review of mergers exist to try and keep those metastable positions for longer, but they've long fucked that up.
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From Dolby 5.1, Atmos, DTS and a ton of other features, it's pretty much locked up with the huge corporations. I always thought consumer standards should always be open and not proprietary. Good for Dolby, bad for consumers.
I have not heard this myself, but apparently it is pretty good. https://www.schiit.com/product... [schiit.com]
Masimo never should have had it (Score:4, Interesting)
So it turns out Masimo, maker of medical devices, really should never have bought Sound United in the first place, but hey the CEO was an audiophile and decided to force his hobby into the company.
That didn't go down well. They paid $1bn for Sound United, and in the process it wiped $6bn from their company value. Their stock never recovered. They have been trading at half their peak value since. Anyway fast forward to the end of 2024 and the CEO was fired by shareholders after a board sponsored vote to remove him. Now that he's gone it makes sense to offload his pet project too.
At least Samsung makes sense to own consumer AV brands.
Ah, nostalic sounds (Score:2)
Reading all those brand names took me back to my youthful audiophile years regularly visiting the high end audio shop to see and listen to what was new, and occasionally buying a second hand top piece of equipment and high quality recordings on CD.
That is, until I designed my own final loudspseaker system, which doesn't need high end electronics to outperform any system I had heard.
It's no wonder all those brands disappear or merge when the audio quality was already the same forty years ago. Only build qual
Circle the wagons (Score:3)
You see this pattern everywhere in contracting markets. I've always thought of it (From the PoV of company leadership) : "We must circle the wagons to protect ourselves against the customer who has too many choices."
So, all these companies coalesce like the large black hole at the end of a universe which collapses in on itself. What is left of value in this situation? You have a collection of companies which didn't innovate out of the contracting market and/or refused to do so, and now they have dubious value to investors. The only thing left of value is the brand name and their reputation which was once great.
Think of the companies buying up these brand names as collectors of goodwill? No, I don't think so. They probably just want the name to fool consumers into buying something from them. Look at all the things branded "Polaroid" which weren't instant cameras.
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You misunderstand. This isn't about fooling or goodwill, or circling. This is capitalism. In its only truly stable state capitalism is a monopoly. Without regulation all market will trend towards this position through mergers and elimination of competitors. The end goal of capitalism is to be the big cheese whom no one can compete with.
Samsung actually makes good gear, thanks to Harman (Score:2)
Not everything Samsung makes is good, but Harman is great, as is Revel. Meanwhile, Denon is great. So it looks like some great brands combined. Hopefully B&W can get some engineering from Revel and make good speakers for once. Polk can be quite good, so no foul there.
It's Samsung vs Audiovox now. Then again, it already was.
Iâ(TM)ll take it if they give me a small form (Score:2)
By small, I mean small footprint. Make it a class d amp for all I care if it has decent power and clean sound. But make it small! The size of a Mac mini is about right.
portable audio devices...really (Score:2)
Re: portable audio devices...really (Score:2)