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?
from what i've read, the home audio business is an afterthought--the real target is in auto/connectivity--it sounds like the end goal is to integrate car systems with home security, appliances, etc. harmon is a bigger player in the car space than i thought--supposedly they have $24b in backorders, so maybe this will work out for samsung.
That home audio was an afterthought for Samsung is exactly what makes me wonder if Samsung will do anything to support it- or just let it die.
Would be interesting if Samsung found a buyer for the home audio- imagine throwing that in with Naim/Focal, or the group that owns McIntosh, Audio Research, etc
I bet they divest and spin them off/out within the next 12-24 mos. I agree they are after the auto stack. This hit our daily news clips at Intel. We are focused on autonomous driving. Home audio, not so much. I'm sure I have more invested in that than intel
Note that I’m not disparaging their products per se, and I haven’t necessarily established that a real - as opposed to perceived - product problem exists.
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.
Frankly, I’m going to go as far as to say that in the case of certain emails I’ve received with unverifiable reference numbers and erroneous timelines stated within them, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is some degree of illegality involved.
edit...
The unverifiable reference numbers can be reproduced. Create an account on samsung website. Register a product. Enter a service order. Obtain number. Log out. Log back in. Check open service orders. Nothing displays.
When I confronted a representative with this observation (via telephone) I was provided.... laugh out loud... ANOTHER reference number.
'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.
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.
I find it ironic that the company which turned 30 years of classic Infinity speakers into the world’s most pathetic garage sale are getting swallowed up by the new top dog in town. I mean, I wonder is Samsung can stomp on the ghost of Infinity past any more than Harman, lol!
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.
willand, i had what may be the same power issue with my samsung tv--there's a diy fix that even i was able to do involving replacing $.50 caps--google it
My Samsung 1080p set started taking a very long time to start up after about two to three years of ownership. I did a Google search of this and found that there was a class action lawsuit against Samsung on this so I contacted them about it. Three days later a technician showed up at my house, replaced some stuff on one of the boards and told me my tv will last forever now. That was about 5 years ago. This old clunker still has a perfect picture.
I can't find JBL or Revel sales figures but I think they along with the microphone company AKG and Lexicon control systems have contributed immensely to the huge car audio business for Harmon. Perhaps these nests of creativity and perfectionism will be encouraged rather than discarded or sold off?
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