After last week’s news about Samsung purchasing Harman a few areas of speculation opened up, saying that the Galaxy S8 may come with Harman/Kardon acoustics, or that Samsung will manufacture a car now, seeing how Harman is one of the puzzle pieces they were lacking. Both claims were dismissed today.
A new conference was held in Seoul just hours ago, meant to detail the deal between Samsung and Harman and participating there was Harman CEO, Dinesh Paliwal, as well as Samsung Chief Strategy Office, Young Sohn. The deal is worth $8 billion, being Samsung’s largest company purchase ever. Officials were keen to mention that Samsung is not making a car and that Harman Kardon acoustics may only be used on Galaxy S phones from 2018.
This means that the Galaxy S8 won’t benefit from the new tech, probably because it was already developed or close to its final stage when the deal was announced. Or maybe Harman still has an obligation towards Huawei, with whom they cooperated for the release of the Huawei MediaPad M3 tablet, with Harman/Kardon acoustics.
The past year has brought us quite a few companies opting for more higher end and stereo acoustics and even Apple moved to stereo speakers. Samsung is a bit late to the party, but it seems they’re keeping the goods for 2018.
