Acquisition finalized
Regardless of Samsung’s massive expansion and praiseworthy success rate, Samsung has always shown interest in either acquiring startups or developing its own inventions. However, the company decided to finally acquire a big fish like Harman International Industries for $8 billion last November. On March 10th, Samsung had finally secured the deal successfully.
According to the president of Harman Industry Dinesh Paliwal,
"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."
In case this statement by the president may sound slightly digressed, we must remember that Harman has control over Infinity, JBL, Lexicon, and Mark Levinson, besides Harman Kardon.
Next step for Samsung
I find the move by Samsung quite different from the moves followed by Google and Apple currently. Google’s Android Auto project will greatly assist every driver that will install Android Auto in their car as they will no longer have to engage themselves in other activities apart from driving. Drivers will be able to sort out numerous tasks such as changing songs, checking weather condition and even answering or declining phone calls without removing their hands from the steering wheel.
Apple, on the other hand, had previously intended to not become too obvious regarding its project called Project Titan, which is also about self-driving cars and related technologies. The expansion of the automotive industry will leave out a few crucial markets with the capacity for generating lucrative profits from diverse opportunities.
Both of these tech giants are trying to expand into the same industry, whereas Samsung will soon become widely available in our lives, like the smart home technology. I hope my house does not catch fire buying devices that burst.
Harman has a labor force of 30,000 employees and will continue to operate as an independent entity even after the acquisition by Samsung.
