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

Is all china or India now.   Most of those brands dont make anything in their home countries and the few that do make only a few of their small quantity highest end products there.  The real thing of value in those brands is the car audio.  There is millions available when you outfit a 500,000 new cars and Harman is HEAVILY invested in car audio.  ATMOS is coming and these cars will have 15, 16, 17 channels with speakers everywhere, including overhead.  The small amount of stuff B+W sells to audio dealers is dwarfed by the automotive business.   Here in Las Vegas, a purely audio store cannot make it work, they have to do home theater and video to turn any kind of profit.

And doesnt Samsung own JBL?  Harman sold that off some years ago already. Looks to me like a pure car audio play on the part of Harman. 

Personally I think Samsung/Harman has been a good corporate parent of their high end brands. I was rightly concerned when they bought JBL back in the 1990s and turned out a bunch of mediocre products. But since Samsung took over, they've allowed the consumer, high end, and pro divisions to separate and put out great stuff for each market. 

They seem to allow each brand to focus on their core customers instead of trying to be all things. Like any corporate parent, if a division hits their numbers, management continues as is. If not, things change. But it seems like there's continuity of brand identity and quality. 

And there are still plenty of boutique brands to explore. I'm more concerned about their continuity when founders leave. 

My experience with Harmon Luxury Group is that their service and support leaves a lot to be desired.   

"With the exception of Levinson, Martin and to a degree B&W it is all mid-fi brands."

Pretty dismissive and elitist attitude. 

@llg98ljk that is to be expected in a space that think it is a big thing when we’re a niche within a niche. To put how small we’re as a subset of audio, AirPods Pro 2, AirPods 3, and AirPods Max alone gave Apple almost 22 billion in revenue for 2024

Apple could’ve bought All of so-called Hi-Fi, Mid-Fi and Lo-Fi companies in our little pocket of audio and all they have to use is revenue from 2024 alone

But hey let us keep arbitrary metrics up