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Harman To Acquire B&W, Denon, Polk And Marantz From Masimo In $350 Million Deal

Harman haven’t always done great with their acquired pro audio brands. Studer (now owned by Evertz), Soundcraft and Lexicon come to mind as Harman brands that have been allowed to wither.
Any AKG microphones that I use nowadays are designs that are as old as I am.
I predict only the brands that fill gaps in the Harman/Samsung portfolio will be maintained others will slip away.
 
I am happy that D&M in particular found a new home. Consolidation is probably what is needed to make these businesses stay afloat if not profitable. Could have ended up much worse, so let's see what happens.

Marantz just announced new AV-20 processor and seems according to preliminary data that innovation in their house continues. Looks like they pushed SINAD to 110dB from AV-10's 107dB. While I would personally rather have them spend money on new version of Audyssey than 3dB SINAD improvement from already excellent 107dB, it is a good sign (and hopefully will be proven at bench at ASR).
 
JSmith said:
I have no issue with that one... they should have closed in shame after many years ago dumping an Oppo BDP-83 in a different case and selling it for many times the price. They were caught out pretty quickly...


JSmith
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2010 ish? I know nothing of Lexicons domestic offering, the Lexicon PCM 96 surround was possibly the last great pro hardware product they released and that was 2008 I think! I guess around that time the effects and reverb market shifted mostly to plugins so their core market probably disappeared quite abruptly and Harman were looking for ways to utilise Lexicons brand and engineers expertise.
 
Miley_B said:
2010 ish?
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Yep... Lexicon's BD-30 was released in 2009 and became more available in 2010. Oppo was around USD$500, Lexicon was around $3500... only difference was the case and when turned on Lexicon brand showed instead of Oppo. The BD-30 was THX certified... but user measurements showed no difference between the two.


JSmith
 
On the one hand, it's a good thing, these brands are iconic and for good reasons, and people keep their jobs!
On the other hand you'll have more and more monopolization, but it is what it is, and perhaps it's a turn for the good, I grant it to them:)
 
B&W has been switching owners for so long now... I highly doubt it is making any money or no one would be selling it after a few years.
 
pma said:
Is monopoly a positive news?
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I'm generally opposed to industry consolidation with few exceptions, but to Amir's point, it's arguably better the businesses get sold more or less intact, Vs. The #1 alternative which is shutting them down, the trademarks go to a licensing shop, which proceeds to slap your logo on as much crap as they can sell before people figure out the bait and switch.

It's either this or $17.99 B&W earbuds at the gas station in 3 years.

Masimo should never have bought these brands, I like video games but I have no business trying to run a game studio.
 
Masimo bought Sound United for over $1B. It was never a good fit and nobody understood any benefit to a medical devices company. Working with the Sound United team accross multiple brands things quickly declined and cuts began. This is a fire-sale which sucks but necessary due to declining revenue from the Sound United brands.

Looks like a couple of brands are not making the cut like Boston Acoustics (website has no products) and Classe (not sure, it was a B&W sister company many times)

Itai
 
mns3dhm said:
I thought that Samsung or VOXX would be the eventual purchaser of these brands. It’s good to see new ownership that has resources to develop them.
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Harman is owned by Samsung!
 
Interesting to see these companies brought under the same umbrella as Roon… There's no audio product I enjoy more, and on the face of it, this seems like a good thing.
 
I guess we won't be seeing any innovation from these brands the coming years. Best of luck to all the fools paying for the badge!
 
Keith_W said:
What have Sony done which is so great lately? They helped invent the CD and the entire portable music market. But their last innovations were from 20 years ago and involved pushing more DRM onto consumers (SACD, ATRAC, Minidisc). Their lunch was eaten by the Koreans and Apple. Sony needs a great big slap in the face, otherwise they will go the way of Philips (co-inventors of the CD, by the way).
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They lost their music business by doubling down on suing teenagers and twenty somethings who were stealing music online.... Instead of seeing the new business opportunity before them. A classic business strategy failure.
 
The CEO of Harman just changed:

www.businesswire.com

HARMAN Announces Leadership Transition: Christian Sobottka Appointed as New President and Chief Executive Officer

HARMAN International, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., focused on connected technologies for automotive, consumer, and enterprise ...
www.businesswire.com

Many audio groups expanded into automotive-branded systems, so shaping the Harman brand portfolio to dominate that field will be a good project. That is in the context of spatial audio, Apple vs Android car, and so forth. Dolby has a strong relationship with Apple. Samsung and Google have Eclipsa to compete with ATMOS. Sony has 360 spatial audio. Samsung has Gaming Hub in its TVs, so there may be opportunities for partnerships and to add branded audio to that. Samsung has a strong position in mobile phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, and TV/home theater to move their audio brands into.

By the numbers, Samsung appears to be well managed.

Their challenge will be to manage their brand positioning, keep R&D healthy, scale manufacturing quality, and do good marketing.

It will take some time to Samsung their supply chains and move to Samsung Linux which is Tizen.

On the pro-audio side - microphones, and on both pro- and consumer, speaker drivers, Samsung has the resources to do competitive analysis of microphone sensors and speaker transducers, and all the engineers and equipment to produce the best across price points. Bring more science to microphone capsules and speaker drivers!

Procter and Gamble is the classic brand master and sales and marketing by the numbers company. You know the individual brands, but the P&G brand is really not a thing.

us.pg.com

Brands | P&G

Iconic brands you can trust. At Procter & Gamble we make every day more than ordinary with P&G products for your family and home.
us.pg.com us.pg.com

There is a lot of private equity ownership of audio waiting to cash out.
 
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I expect great things from D&M in the future and hopefully their brand will help with that.

Their x800H series of AVRs as well as Marantz equivalents+AVPs established a new standard in the industry. 3800H was the value king and AV-10 established new standards for AVPs in many respects. However, even though these products had the right street pricing (under $1K and around $5K respectively), D&M managed to crank up losses with the best product line ever. Not sure what contributed most to the losses - pure lack of demand and overall decline of the AVR market, their excessively overlapping line up, or internal cost structure.

Line up and internal cost structure could be addressed, but overall decline in the AVR market is what it is - at least for now. I hope that Samsung jumps in and helps with a good licensing deal for their soundbars and TVs - so our niche market continues to thrive and we get even better goodies with the next generation of D&M products.

EDIT: Forgot to include the link. Google translate.

 
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It looks like the new leader of HARMAN comes from car audio roots. Is that worrisome for Revel, Marantz and home audio fans? Samsung is buying up all the great companies. Hopefully it won't turn out like SKYPE with Microsoft. Where they steal the technology from the acquired product and eventually discard it. In the future, we will spend less time in cars rather than more. Maybe the new CEO will understand that inevitable trend and consider Home audio important?
 
amper42 said:
It looks like the new leader of HARMAN comes from car audio roots. Is that worrisome for Revel, Marantz and home audio fans? Samsung is buying up all the great companies. Hopefully it won't turn out like SKYPE with Microsoft. Where they steal the technology from the acquired product and eventually discard it. In the future, we will spend less time in cars rather than more. Maybe the new CEO will understand that inevitable trend and consider Home audio important?
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I think Harman's acquisitions- both Roon and this- demonstrate a (quite surprising) commitment to home audio. I hope that's not wishful thinking…
 
hashkey said:
I think Harman's acquisitions- both Roon and this- demonstrate a (quite surprising) commitment to home audio. I hope that's not wishful thinking…
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But… what kind of home audio? Isn’t it ominous that Harman/Samsung had Revel dump its flagship speaker?
 
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