Samsung buys Harman for $8B


Wow! Seems they were after Harman's auto business which is 65% of what Harman does. Will Samsung leave Harman's high end brands alone or does that spell ruination of Mark Levinson, Revel, JBL, Lexicon, et al? 

Is this the largest high end acquisition? 
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'Samsung S7 modestly priced monoblocks for 27,000.00 and a pre amp for 16,000.00!'?. With those kind of things going to no doubt fly of the shelf you better hurry to get all the ancillary items. 
Their phones may already sound better than some much more expensive equipment, they possibly think anyway. 
You gotta wonder about a company of that size that can't get a grip on the Galaxy. We don't know all the details, but on the surface, it's easy to wonder what business do they have acquiring more business until they get their house in order. But what do I know  :)

I will say that if I was planning on buying products from any of the companies they will own ... I would buy before they have a chance to mess it up. Because they will. We have all seen what has happened to the home audio industry as a result of bean counters running the show. 

Quality audio is a direct result of companies that have a passion to create quality products for a small segment of the global population who equally enjoy said products.
" What sucks is their overall ineptitude where customer service is concerned, as evidenced by numerous factors including, but not limited to, egregious instances of "confirmation" emails with fictitious "reference" numbers. They use many "lets have the customer jump through hoopes" techniques and "pass-the-buck to another department". They cannot even follow simple instructions to call as opposed to email, despite their providing the ability for a customer to state their preference. Essentially they intentionally and unnecessarily delay servicing, which is certainly unbecoming of a billion dollar organization. Then, when/if someone finally comes on the phone, its not clear (to me anyway) what language the person is speaking, or country they are located in; if you know what I mean."

So far this is my experience with my 2012 Plasma TV that had a main board fail.  Excellent TV until it decided not to completely power up one day.  I may amend this post if they come through with a partial(depreciated) refund after "reviewing" my case for close to 2 weeks.

Bill
The clothing and sport gear company Patagonia founder a while back realized they had grown too big to do the core of their business well. I forget the details; there was an article about him and the company a month or so ago in The New Yorker.
99% of founders of companies or corporations would choose being colonized by a mega-corporation over staying small and producing a decent product.