So this happened last week and I'm still turning it over in my head: Samsung agreed to buy Harman International for something like $8 billion, all cash, $112 a share. If you don't recognize "Harman" as a name, you definitely recognize what they own: JBL, AKG, Harman Kardon, Infinity, Mark Levinson if you're into the really expensive stuff. Basically a huge chunk of the audio gear you've bought in your life traces back to this one company, and now it traces back to Samsung.
I own a pair of AKG K240s. Bought them maybe three years ago for around seventy bucks because a guy on a forum swore by them for mixing, and he was right, they're great, unglamorous, kind of ugly, sound fantastic. I also inherited a Harman Kardon soundbar from my parents' old TV setup that still works better than it has any right to. So when I saw this headline my first reaction wasn't "interesting market move," it was "oh no, what are they going to do to my headphones."
That's probably not fair to Samsung, and I know it. Companies get bought and sold constantly and the products don't always change overnight, sometimes they don't change at all for years. But I've got the Note7 fiasco sitting in the back of my mind from like a month ago, phones catching fire, the whole line getting killed off, and it's hard not to let that color how I read this. Samsung's a company that can build genuinely excellent hardware and also, apparently, ship a battery problem across an entire flagship line without catching it in time. I don't love the idea of that same organization now owning the studio monitor company my music-nerd friends have been recommending to me for a decade.
Here's the thing that actually makes the deal make sense once you dig one layer past the headphones, though: Harman's real money isn't in AKG cans or JBL bluetooth speakers, it's in car audio and automotive infotainment systems. They're the company quietly building the sound systems and dashboard software for Mercedes, BMW, a bunch of others. Samsung buying Harman is Samsung buying its way into cars — sensors, connected-car software, the whole "every vehicle is basically a computer now" trend that Google and Apple have been circling with Android Auto and CarPlay. Framed that way it's less "Samsung wants to ruin my headphones" and more "Samsung doesn't want to miss the next platform shift the way some phone makers missed mobile the first time around." Which, fine, I get it. It's a smart bet on paper.
I still don't love it emotionally, if that makes sense. There's something about a handful of legacy audio brands (some of these go back to the 50s and 60s, actual engineers who cared about actual sound) getting folded into a phone company's automotive strategy that feels a little sad even when the business logic is airtight. Not outraged, just sad, the way you feel when a favorite small restaurant gets bought by a chain and the food is still fine but you know, you just know, something's going to slowly drift.
Maybe nothing changes. Deal hasn't even closed yet, this stuff usually takes months to clear regulators, and by the time it actually goes through everyone will have moved on to whatever the next headline is. My K240s will keep sounding exactly the same regardless of whose logo is on the parent company's annual report. I just wanted to write this down now, while the "wait, they bought AKG?" reaction is still fresh, because in six months I probably won't remember I even had it.
Also, unrelated complaint I'm sneaking in here because it's my blog and I can: can we please stop calling every acquisition a "landmark deal" in the press releases. Every single one is landmark. Nothing is ever just a deal anymore.
Anyway. Keeping an eye on this one mostly because I'm curious whether Harman's engineering culture survives contact with a consumer electronics giant that ships a new phone lineup twice a year, or whether five years from now AKG headphones just quietly start looking a lot more like Samsung earbuds packaging. We'll see.