Samsung announced that they have completed the acquisition of Harman. The acquisition was announced in November last year, valued at $8 billion.
Harman is more commonly known in association with premium audio brands including AKG and JBL, gaining a following within the audio and music industry. However, Harman also provides products and solutions for automakers, including connected car systems, audio and visual products, enterprise automation solutions; and connected services.
In a press release, Young Sohn, President and Chief Strategy Officer of Samsung Electronics, and Chairman of the Board, Harman, said, “We see transformative opportunities in the car – and a future which seamlessly connects lifestyle across automotive, home, mobile and work. Samsung’s and HARMAN’s leadership in these spaces perfectly positions Samsung to be the preferred partner to our OEM customers.”
According to the release, there’s a lot of emphasis on the automotive technologies carried by Harman. In fact Harman rakes in majority of its revenue from supplying components and developing software for big names in the automotive industries, including navigation systems, infotainment, telematics and driver-assistance technologies.
Dinesh Paliwal, HARMAN President and CEO echoed the automotive focus, “Samsung provides HARMAN with the scale, platform and complementary technologies to accelerate growth and extend our global market leadership in automotive, smart audio and connected technologies…Working closely with automakers and other technology companies, Samsung and HARMAN will define – and drive – the future of automotive.”
This could mean that Samsung is moving a foot into playing with cars by starting off with hardware components. With many major tech companies putting a foot in self driving car technologies, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to think that Samsung has a very viable interest too – perhaps not in actual car manufacturing, but definitely the software capabilities as well as electronics component integration within cars and other vehicles.
With Harman’s fame in the audio technology, Samsung is also looking to ramp up their audio capabilities paired with their already established technology in displays, hoping to provide a more all rounded solutions for consumer and professional devices. On the consumer end, we speculate we could be seeing improvements made to phones and home entertainment appliances.
As of now, there is no mention of staff changes. Samsung announced that they are retaining HARMAN’s work force, headquarters and facilities, as well as all of its consumer and professional audio brands.
HARMAN’s common stock will cease trading prior to market open on March 13, 2017 and will be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. HARMAN will operate as a standalone Samsung subsidiary, overseen by a Board of Directors led by Mr. Sohn. Mr. Paliwal will remain CEO of HARMAN, leading the Company with his management team, and will continue to serve as a member of its Board.
