One of the great things about the newly announced Samsung-Harman deal is that more of Samsung’s devices, including high-end smartphones, will come with Harman sound in the future. However, don’t get too excited about it just yet. Samsung may be ready to pay $8 billion for Harman, which happens to be the biggest purchase in Samsung’s history, but it’ll take a while until the Galaxy S comes equipped with Harman audio technology.
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Talking to reporters at Samsung Electronics’ Seocho office building in Seoul, Korea, Harman CEO Dinesh Paliwal cleared the air regarding Samsung’s intention with Harman. Many speculated that Samsung might be looking to build its own smart car with the help of Harman. Samsung denied those claims last week, and Paliwal further reinforced the idea that Samsung’s Harman purchase isn’t about carmaking.
“Over the last week since the Samsung-Harman deal, we have visited many key automotive clients globally and made sure that we wanted to become primary solution provider, Tier 1,” the CEO said, The Korea Herald reports. “(We made sure) we do not want to enter into carmaking,” he added.
Paliwal will continue to lead Samsung’s Harman unit after the purchase is complete. And carmakers will be the target customers for Samsung.
Harman’s CEO also commented about future Samsung smartphones and Harman audio.
“Since we are globally number one in audio technology, we plan to create new opportunities by applying the audio technologies into Samsung’s smartphones and home appliances,” Paliwal said. “We may adopt Harman’s luxury audio technology into Galaxy S series possibly in 2018.”
