Samsung will Acquire Harman for $8 Billion in Cash

We generally see shifts in trends when it comes to the smartphone market. At one point, most manufacturers were spending money to use the best display available for their device. With devices generally having such good displays now, some OEMs then focused on improving the camera experience.

Now, it seems there is another trend to improve the audio quality that smartphones are currently capable of. Granted, we’ve seen some companies like HTC focus on audio quality for years, but there are still some who are content with shipping a sub-par audio experience with their product. This year, though, we saw HTC continue their efforts, albeit, in a different way than before with the HTC 10. ZTE showed they were serious about audio quality with the front-facing speakers of the Axon 7. Then we have LG who chose to ship the world’s first smartphone with a Quad DAC in the LG V20.

Today, Samsung has announced they will acquire Harman for $8 billion in cash. You may or may not know this company has a lot of brands behind it including JBL, Harman Kardon, Mark Levinson, AKG, Lexicon, Infinity, and Revel. Harman is also the one responsible for licensing brands like Bowers & Wilkins and Bang & Olufsen. At this time though it’s unclear if Samsung will go all-in when it comes to audio quality of their future smartphones, but this does give them a huge opportunity, and Samsung is know for leveraging their resources company-wide.

Harman has their hands in a lot of different markets though. They’re currently a big player in automobile technologies like infotainment, cyber security, over-the-air updates and telematics. They have a business-to-business platform with the ability to deliver integrated, large-scale audio and visual professional solutions at stadiums, concert facilities and other performance centers. The company even employs 8,000 software designers and engineers who are currently working on the IoT market.

So we can see why Harman is such an attractive acquisition for a company like Samsung. The question is, will Samsung make good use of it? And what does that mean for us smartphone enthusiasts? Let us know what you think down below!

Source: Samsung Newsroom

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