Despite its explosive growth, Samsung has mostly preferred to buy smaller startups or develop its own technology. That changed last November when the company announced it would purchase Harman International Industries, Incorporated for about $8 billion, and tonight it confirmed the deal is complete.
Harman president Dinesh Paliwal said “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….Samsung and Harman will define – and drive – the future of automotive.” If you’re not sure how that works, remember Harman is the parent company of not only the Harman Kardon brand, but also Infinity, JBL, Lexicon and Mark Levinson.
That’s also a different way of going about things compared to Google’s Android Auto and Waymo efforts, or Apple pushing CarPlay and whatever Project Titan really is. It also is a potential boost to Samsung’s smart home and other connected devices, even as Harman, which counts 30,000 employees, continues to operate as an independent subsidiary.
