B&W being purchased by a Silicon Valley Startup

Thought this was/is interesting....B&W is being purchased:

Speaker Maker Bowers & Wilkins Sells Out to a Tiny Silicon Valley Startup »

 

West Coast sound for B&W!!

 

Another one bites the dust...*sigh*

 

Marantz, Luxman, Mission , McIntosh went in a funny direction fortunately back on track , let's hope it won't be cheapo toot with the B&W badge on it.

 

Weird....

 

How strange.

 

Very interesting.

 

Very strange indeed. I've always loved B&W speakers - have owned only three pairs of primary listening speakers in the past 25 years and all have been B&Ws.

That said, there's already been a lot of price creep in their mid-high range over the years and so I don't know if this acquisition will change much as long as the new owners aren't stupid enough to move away from the core tech and design philosophy.

Plus there's always Harbeth.

 

Nowadays property and production are much more independent one to each other than in the past. Investors want boutique brands to be exactly what they are, because the best of the best is always the most profitable market in crisis times. Think of Ferrari, which is now FCA (Chrysler and FIAT) owned.

Money is always wise. New money means to an old brand We Believe In You. I don't think it does mean Let's Make B&W the Beats by Dr.Dre of Loudspeakers.

 

I hope they will respect the name and quality now found inside.

 

What? I thought they did well?

 

This isn't what I meant when I said it would be good if millennials got interested in high-end audio.

 

from the article:

Bowers & Wilkins became a household name before speaker companies had to distinguish themselves through Spotify integrations and voice recognition capability. While Bowers & Wilkins does sell speakers designed to accommodate people used to listening to music through their smartphones, Atkins acknowledges that his company lacks the expertise needed to build software that communicates with cloud services. Any company that wants to sell speakers at a significant premium would need to integrate high-end hardware with sophisticated software. Yu plans to begin selling new products that incorporate Eva’s work by early to mid-2017.

While the details of the sale are odd, Atkins’s decision to sell isn’t a total surprise. He hinted at a potential acquisition in an interview with the Guardian last year, but that was long before talks started with Eva. Bang & Olufsen A/S, another high-end audio-equipment maker, walked away from takeover talks with a Chinese billionaire last month and replaced its CEO.

Bowers & Wilkins’s most devoted customers will probably be skeptical about a Valley startup being the best steward for a fancy speaker brand. Audiophiles often turn their noses up at digital music companies, which have a reputation for sacrificing fidelity for convenience. “It will take some explaining,” said Atkins. “I think when the verdict comes back, it will be clear that this is exactly what Bowers & Wilkins should be doing.”

 

I do.

In your example, an established car company has bought another car company, the latter being a very recognizable brand outside of the world of sports car enthusiasts.

In this case, a silicon valley startup has bought a company that really only audiophiles are especially familiar with. Silicon valley startups are about making better mousetraps, not serving as holding companies that keep acquisitions as they are.

 

Now with Bluetooth!

 

I can almost see the new B&W "lifestyle" products showing up at our local Walmart. Nakamichi will finally have some serious competition. I'm surprised Audiovox didn't pick up B&W....oh, they haven't yet completely run Acoustic Research or Energy into the ground yet.

 

Already available at Best Buy.

 

I own two of the little Eva wireless climate sensors - an indoor one and an outdoor one. They're made by Eva Automation - Yu's company. Both sensors work well, they're well made, accurate, and the app used to read and configure the sensors works well on my iPhone 6.

Lots of companies have majority shareholders without traditional backgrounds in the specific products and enginnering that the companies have developed. Sometimes, founders or long-time successful managers or CEOs have to move on because they're simply finished with the business.

This cat, Yu, is smart and experienced enough (in the venture cap and tech startup world) to know better than to monkey around with what is working well at B&W. He's also bringing a lot of cash and other VCs to the B&W table, a significant portion of which will finance the R&D for projects that will help make B&W better and more versatile than it is today. That's my prediction.

 

I'm not sure you sell your company to a third party to address the problem of not having the in-house talent to connect to Spotify - seems a bit drastic. I think you just hire some people for that.

 

Well thank you for the news link.
I was planning on buying the new 803 D3's sometime this summer and replacing my 804 D2's.
However, I think I will wait off and see what happens to the company, and maybe look at other speakers in the same price range.

 

I'm good. I'm 63 years old, my B&W speakers will be with me until the end.

 

Exactly but we don't know what their balance sheet looked like so hopefully it will all be for the better for both.

 

What? Buyers of "expensive" audiophile equipment don't want streaming devices built into their speakers. If they do want a streaming device they'll want to purchase it separately from the speakers (and often separate from the amp). This type of thing does make sense in the lower-end market where all-in-one devices are popular -- but you get this from outsourcing, or hiring developers, or by licensing and rebranding existing hardware.

Whatever the real reason was for the sale, apparently they're not saying (yet).

 

I bet they'll be going up against Devialet.