Hifi Becoming Mainstream? (in light of Samsung acquisition)

[Believe High Fidelity]

For those of you who haven't heard the new Samsung acquired Harman Group a few days ago

Link to the article here

From the outset it looks to be more for the systems integration within the automotive market. However, not that long ago we saw the emergence of hifi in the big retailers like Best Buy and Tweeter.

What does this mean for the business of hifi if the next brand name gets acquired by big business?

How does this affect your opinion of the Harman brand?

Do you feel that hifi is in danger of becoming commodity with more focus on branding and marketing (a la Beats Audio)?

 

[NorthStar]

a) What does this mean for the business of hifi if the next brand name gets acquired by big business?
b) How does this affect your opinion of the Harman brand?
c) Do you feel that hifi is in danger of becoming commodity with more focus on branding and marketing (a la Beats Audio)?

a) Two separate entities. But money talks, from any side. The customers, us, and the investors, us, can only win if choosing correctly.
b) Money talks, so HK is no different and my own opinion isn't affected, not important, only the people designing superior sounding products of great value count, not the company's names. Unless the name truly represent the people's higher working skills and quality/valued products.
c) No, because there will always be those "special audio classes" by manufacturers for "special" audio customers.

About you Josh...what is you own vision on this all affair?

 

[Believe High Fidelity]

a) What does this mean for the business of hifi if the next brand name gets acquired by big business?
b) How does this affect your opinion of the Harman brand?
c) Do you feel that hifi is in danger of becoming commodity with more focus on branding and marketing (a la Beats Audio)?

a) Two separate entities. But money talks, from any side. The customers, us, and the investors, us, can only win if choosing correctly.
b) Money talks, so HK is no different and my own opinion isn't affected, not important, only the people designing superior sounding products of great value count, not the company's names. Unless the name truly represent the people's higher working skills and quality/valued products.
c) No, because there will always be those "special audio classes" by manufacturers for "special" audio customers.

About you Josh...what is you own vision on this all affair?

I find that since we have only a handful of brick and mortar dealers left in all of the US here that we will be seeing the eventual conclusion of 2 channel in the mainstream. Samsung and its vast channels of electronics and other tech will not "invest" into the engineering of improved audio gear and that will move to headphones or in this case automotive. 2 channel is just a speck on the radar.

So I am feeling the weight of the industry move to bespoke and boutique style selling. The bigger brands if offered to get out the game will sell if given the opportunity to.

And that leaves us with everything else....

 

[Lee]

It's just a car audio branding play I think. No indication of high end audio going mainstream imho.

Sad event though given the amazing and distinctly American heritage of Harman.

 

[caesar]

Yes, I also think it's a car audio/ car entertainment play.

Considering an excellent Samsung TV is about $2,000, I think Samsung will be happy to move soundbars that are $100-$200 along with that TV. High end audio gear costing 10 or 20 times the price of the best Samsung TVs will probably sound ludicrous to most people.

 

[DaveC]

For Samsung, it makes sense for OEM car audio, my new STi has a HK system in it (it's nothing special but not bad)... Also for home theater, Samsung TVs are very popular but they don't have good audio systems to pair with them. Now they can set up displays at Best Buy with all Samsung equipment. And since their smartphones/tablets burst into flames randomly they need a new business to get into!

I don't see HiFi swinging back to mainstream until we have a strong middle class again. I don't have high hopes for the world financially right now and I hope we don't see HiFi get even more niche and the high end even more exclusive and expensive with a severe lack of middle ground. Since so many B&M stores closed down, very few people have ever heard a decent system. People can't want what they don't know exists. For the most part our target customers aren't aware of our existence... might be a problem? How do we solve it? I think we need an industry-wide program to expose people to decent systems somehow... people don't go to audio shows if they're not already into HiFi, nobody in Denver is aware that Rocky Mountain Audio Fest even exists, which is crazy since it's been around so long.

 

[Believe High Fidelity]

For Samsung, it makes sense for OEM car audio, my new STi has a HK system in it (it's nothing special but not bad)... Also for home theater, Samsung TVs are very popular but they don't have good audio systems to pair with them. Now they can set up displays at Best Buy with all Samsung equipment. And since their smartphones/tablets burst into flames randomly they need a new business to get into!

I don't see HiFi swinging back to mainstream until we have a strong middle class again. I don't have high hopes for the world financially right now and I hope we don't see HiFi get even more niche and the high end even more exclusive and expensive with a severe lack of middle ground. Since so many B&M stores closed down, very few people have ever heard a decent system. People can't want what they don't know exists. For the most part our target customers aren't aware of our existence... might be a problem? How do we solve it? I think we need an industry-wide program to expose people to decent systems somehow... people don't go to audio shows if they're not already into HiFi, nobody in Denver is aware that Rocky Mountain Audio Fest even exists, which is crazy since it's been around so long.

Well for 8 billion it makes little sense to get so much non car related assets if they truly only needed just the software for audio. Maybe the branding of the audio labels but for 8 billion? They are a leading technology company so it would be easy for them to design their own software or just OEM the products from these guys rather than buying the whole lot.

I think there is more to this story than meets the eye....