
Samsung just bought a huge chunk of the premium audio world
Bowers & Wilkins Px8. | Image credit – Bowers & Wilkins Samsung might be known for phones and TVs, but it actually owns a bunch of premium audio brands, too – including JBL, AKG, Harman Kardon, Mark Levinson and Infinity.
It picked them all up when it acquired Harman International back in 2016 for $8 billion. Since then, Harman has continued to run independently, especially strong in the high-end audio and automotive scenes. Now, Samsung is stepping even deeper into the premium audio game because Harman has just signed a deal to acquire the consumer audio division of Masimo for $350 million – and it is a big one. That unit includes some heavy-hitting names like Bowers & Wilkins, Denon, Marantz, Polk Audio and more. Yep, Bowers & Wilkins – that premium British audio brand known for its stunning design and audiophile-grade sound – is now going to be part of the Samsung family.
– Quentin Koffey, Vice Chairman of Masimo's Board of Directors, May 2025 Harman plans to merge this new audio business with its existing lifestyle division to solidify its position as the global leader in consumer audio – a market that is expected to jump from $60.8 billion in 2025 to $70 billion by 2029.
This acquisition represents a strategic step forward in the expansion of HARMAN's core audio business and footprint across key product categories such as Home Audio, Headphones, Hi-fi components, and Car Audio. It complements our existing strengths and opens new avenues for growth. Sound United's portfolio of world-class audio brands including Bowers & Wilkins, Denon and Marantz, will join HARMAN's iconic family of brands, including JBL, Harman Kardon, AKG, Mark Levinson, Arcam, and Revel. Built on a shared legacy of innovation and excellence in audio technology, this combined family of brands, together with the talented employees of both companies, will deliver complementary audio products, strengthen our value proposition and offer more choices to consumers.
– Dave Rogers, President of HARMAN's Lifestyle division, May 2025 This move doesn't just boost Harman's brand portfolio – it could also mean noticeably better sound across Samsung's products, from Galaxy phones to TVs and earbuds.
The company already uses Harman know-how to tune audio for its smartphones, tablets, laptops and soundbars. Now, with Denon, Marantz and B&W in the mix, expect a serious step up in sound quality across the board. Harman plans to wrap up the acquisition by the end of the year. And if the name Masimo sounds familiar, you've probably seen it in headlines tied to Apple.
Masimo and Apple have been in a legal fight that actually caused a temporary sales ban on Apple Watches in the US. That fight is still ongoing, and it's the reason new Apple Watch models can't use pulse oximetry features unless Apple changes how they work or gets a license.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


GSM Arena
2 hours ago
- GSM Arena
Samsung showcases a VR headset screen with 20,000 nits brightness along with other display tech
As Samsung is preparing to launch its first mixed-reality headset, dubbed Project Moohan, the Korean tech giant showcased a cutting-edge OLEDoS panel for such headsets, capable of reaching 20,000 nits of brightness. OLEDoS panels are the same as standard OLED screens, but instead of using a glass or plastic substrate for the backplane, they use silicon, which allows higher brightness, resolution and pixel density. It's mostly used on small screens, and Samsung paired it with a Micro Lens Array to enhance brightness and viewing angles further. However, we don't know if Samsung will use that 1.3-inch panel for its XR headset, but it might end up using its flagship OLEDoS panel with 5,000 ppi and 15,000 nits peak brightness, and 120Hz variable refresh rate. It was showcased last month. During the Augmented World Expo (AWE) 2025 in the US, the company revealed several other cutting-edge displays - White OLEDoS panel, two QD-OLED gaming monitors, a Flexible Gaming OLED, a 12.4-inch rollable and foldable panel, a multi-foldable OLED and a micro-LED stretchable display. Source


Phone Arena
3 hours ago
- Phone Arena
Samsung is focusing on (almost) all the wrong things for the Galaxy S26 Ultra
Before you even think about going there, no, I don't have a crystal ball or a modern-day Nostradamus whispering details on unreleased smartphones in my ear, and despite rumors of an early launch, Samsung has yet to officially announce any relevant Galaxy S26 series information. Let's not mince words. If the Galaxy S26 Ultra ends up retaining the 5,000mAh battery capacity of this year's S25 Ultra (and last year's S24 Ultra, and the S23 Ultra before that, and the S22 Ultra before that, and the S21 Ultra, and the S20 Ultra), Samsung will have some explaining to do. Apart from inexplicably leaving a major component of its Android super-flagship unchanged for seven (!!!) consecutive generations, the world's top handset vendor would trail behind the latest significant upgrades in that field by key rivals like OnePlus, Xiaomi, Honor, Oppo, Vivo, and even Motorola. If you had a choice, would you opt for a bigger S26 Ultra battery or a thinner profile than the S26 Ultra? | Image Credit -- PhoneArena It's going to be mighty hard for a "regular" consumer and casual mobile industry watcher to understand how something like the OnePlus 13T can pair a gargantuan 6,260mAh battery with a compact 6.32-inch screen while the 6.9-inch or so S26 Ultra has to settle for 5,000 or at most 5,400mAh cell capacity. Yes, there's apparently a chance of a small bump from 5,000mAh to "under" 5,400mAh, which would definitely be better than nothing. But a sub-5,500mAh battery will still be considered a disappointment and a compromise compared to what one can imagine the OnePlus 14 will bring to the table after the already impressive 6,000mAh-packing OnePlus 13. The disappointment will be made even greater if the Galaxy S26 Ultra removes the S Pen slot and fails to get its charging support over the 50W mark. Fortunately, all of these are still big ifs, but there's rarely this much smoke without fire in the rumor mill, even with seven or eight months ahead of a phone's commercial release. The stylus support elimination speculation makes me especially angry now that the battery size is expected to go (largely) unchanged. And yes, I realize the S Pen is not that frequently used by the vast majority of S25 Ultra or S24 Ultra owners, but that doesn't change the fact this is a nice feature to have at your disposal, as well as sort of a luxury statement for the best Android phones out there. To lose that and only gain (maybe) 400mAh battery capacity, as well as (maybe) 20 grams in weight and half a millimeter in thickness, would be shockingly ill-advised... if we didn't all remember Samsung's big Galaxy Note-killing mistake from just a few years ago. Yes, there's positive news to be found in the rumor mill of late regarding a Galaxy S26 Ultra that's otherwise starting to sound like a pretty depressing upgrade over the solid but largely unremarkable Galaxy S25 Ultra. No, I'm not talking about the potential reduction of Samsung's reliance on Google, which also seems like a foolish decision to me... that I don't think will ultimately materialize (at least not in 2026). Instead, what's surely exciting about the S26 Ultra is that it could be the only member of its family to use a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. Whether that will be true around the world or not, a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2 SoC would give the 2026 Android hero a chance to keep up with the undoubtedly staggering raw power of Apple's fast-approaching iPhone 17 Pro Max. Yes, the S26 Ultra's front-facing camera will probably be as visible as the one on the S25 Ultra. | Image Credit -- PhoneArena Of course, I'd much rather see the entire Galaxy S26 lineup adopt a global single-chip Snapdragon strategy instead of splitting the world in Snapdragon and Exynos territories, or even worse, rely on Samsung-made Exynos silicon everywhere for non-Ultra models, but hey, we can't have it all. Let's enjoy the little wins in that case, including Samsung's rumored decision to leave the S26 series without under-display camera technology. There's obviously nothing wrong with making a phone's selfie snapper as discreet as possible, but at the moment, that seems like a waste of precious resources that takes time and money to get just right while negatively impacting the performance of the actual imaging sensor. Let's just hope Samsung will find a better use of its resources than simply making the S26 Ultra as thin as it can.


Phone Arena
6 hours ago
- Phone Arena
Samsung's hopes for the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Z Flip 7 are getting bleaker and bleaker
The world's top smartphone vendor is seriously struggling in the no-longer-thriving foldable segment. That's been made abundantly clear by many market reports published over the last year or so, but if you expected the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Z Flip 7 to put their makers back on track for global sales growth, you might have another thing coming. That's at least according to the inside sources consulted by a reputable Korean news outlet, who claim (translated here) that Samsung has had to revise down its initial production goals for this summer's new Z-series devices several times in the past few weeks alone. Equipped with two massive screens (both of which are purportedly larger than what the Z Fold 6 has to offer), as well as an upgraded 200MP primary rear-facing camera and a state-of-the-art Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 sounds like an absolute beast and a big box-office hit in the making. That's apparently what Samsung thought at first too, planning to manufacture 800,000 units in time for next month's launch. The June production target set in "early May" was reportedly reduced to 770,000 by the end of last month and now 630,000. That's a pretty major drop signaling... nothing good for the Korea-based tech giant, which must have remembered its book-style foldables are never as popular as clamshell models. The impressive Galaxy Z Fold 7 is unlikely to sell like hotcakes. But the company's hopes for the Galaxy Z Flip 7 are not as optimistic today as in early May or late May either, going down from 590,000 to 550,000 units for this month's initial production run. That's not a huge reduction, but then again, Samsung started with a rather conservative goal for its next ultra-high-end flip phone, at least compared to the aforementioned Z Fold 7 . The other flip-style foldable expected to see daylight in July, meanwhile, is barely looking at a June production of 160,000 units. That's not only a disappointingly low number for a first-of-a-kind gadget like the Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE, aka " Z Flip 7 popular model", but it's also down from a 210,000 target reportedly set around a month ago and 170,000 units projected as of late May. That's a crucial thing to keep in mind and highlight before you start prematurely calling Samsung's next foldables box-office flops. It's impossible to know exactly how consumers will respond to the Galaxy Z Fold 7 , Z Flip 7 , and Z Flip 7 FE once they're actually released, but clearly, their makers have strong reasons to believe the three new devices won't set the world on fire. The Galaxy Z Flip 6 and Z Fold 6 , in case you're wondering, racked up an estimated 2.9 and 2.1 million unit sales respectively within five months of their commercial debut (according to a third-party source, at least), and while Samsung certainly didn't have those kinds of numbers ready by July 2024, it's hard to imagine the Galaxy Z Flip 7 , for instance, will ever be able to get anywhere near the 3 million global sales milestone. All might not be lost for the Galaxy Z Flip 7 just yet. The most concerning part of all that for Samsung is that the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6 are widely considered moderate hits (at best) compared to the Z Fold 5 and Z Flip 5, so the company's foldable popularity issues are clearly getting worse and worse with each new generation.