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In the news - Harman acquires AMX for $365 million

Joe HebertJoe Hebert Posts: 2,159
in AMX General Discussion
I wonder if and how this will change things...

http://investor.harman.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=849330

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    HARMAN_icraigieHARMAN_icraigie Posts: 660
    AMX swag will now include AKG headphones.
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    ericmedleyericmedley Posts: 4,177
    icraigie wrote: »
    AMX swag will now include AKG headphones.

    :D

    It was an eyebrow raiser in the VIP meeting this afternoon.
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    viningvining Posts: 4,368
    Joe Hebert wrote: »
    I wonder if and how this will change things...

    http://investor.harman.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=849330
    From my perspective I expect mostly positive changes since I can't imagine things getting any worse. I think AMX needs to be run by a company with AV in its blood.
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    a_riot42a_riot42 Posts: 1,624
    I think its a positive move. The Duchossois Group is a private equity firm I think, and own horse race tracks and other businesses that have little to with AMX. Private equity companies seem to buy up good companies solely to extract the profit out of it as it slowly dies. Harman at least is in a complementary business, and have a motive to support AMX beyond just being a cash cow for wealthy investors. I think it will be a good thing overall. The Duchossois Group paid $315 million and are now selling AMX for $365 million 10 years later. It doesn't look like The Duchossois Group really added much value over the last ten years. Just inflation would have made it worth more at this point I would think.
    Paul
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    RicardoSiqueiraRicardoSiqueira Posts: 373
    Hopefully, there will be better support for the residential market, which has been neglected in the past few years. We need a better remote control than the R4, which supports Wi-Fi. I also hope that the current AMX dealerships that invested a lot on maintaining and selling AMX products won't suffer with this change... Lets cross our fingers and hope for better products and continuing support from Harman.
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    a_riot42a_riot42 Posts: 1,624
    Harman's board looks like its made up of former engineers rather than lawyers and finance people so that's a good sign I think. Harman seems to be involved with both residential and commercial/professional industries. Their products are all industry standard top of the line equipment. AKG, Lexicon, JBL, Levinson. Their stock is making new highs as well. I would think that the quality of AMX products is headed higher with this sale, but we'll see I guess.
    Paul
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    pdabrowskipdabrowski Posts: 184
    Being originally from the live audio side of things*, I can only see good things for AMX with this deal. The other companies on the Harman roster still make good products and are certainly not held back by the bean counters when it comes to innovation.

    Very bright times ahead I think.

    *my preferred mixers after all this time working are still Soundcraft, so I am a little biased!
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    banobano Posts: 173
    RicardoSiqueira wrote: »
    Hopefully, there will be better support for the residential market, which has been neglected in the past few years. We need a better remote control than the R4, which supports Wi-Fi. I also hope that the current AMX dealerships that invested a lot on maintaining and selling AMX products won't suffer with this change... Lets cross our fingers and hope for better products and continuing support from Harman.

    There is no resi market in Phoenix. There are 2 qualified amx dealers which stay active only to service their legacy systems.
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    DHawthorneDHawthorne Posts: 4,584
    Past sales of AMX haven't changed much of anything. More the other way around ... companies AMX bought out were likely to get subsumed (think Landmark and Phast). AMX has a very robust commercial market, and they would be fools to tamper with that, but their resi market might be past resuscitation. I suppose we'll see. It doesn't affect me much either way, as my company no longer sells new AMX systems, we only maintain existing ones.
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    RicardoSiqueiraRicardoSiqueira Posts: 373
    DHawthorne. It is very said to see a top programmer like you leave the AMX residential market. My company mostly do residential projects and we are now doing some hybrid systems like AMX backbone with RTI remotes due to the lack of a good AMX remote control. The R4 doesn't cut it anymore. We do prefer the AMX flexibility over the competition, but it is getting more difficult to compete in the residential market with AMX only products. The iPad has saved us with the TPControl App in the past few years. I hope Harman has a better vision and do improve the residential market. What platform are you using now for residential projects?
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    ericmedleyericmedley Posts: 4,177
    Resi is just an ugly place to be right now no matter what your choice of control. The race to the bottom has just destroyed the vertical space. It's hard to sell the idea of relatively expensive custom systems when the alternatives are so cheap and readily available.

    My last gasps with Resi were all basically the client saying they'd bought a butt load of TVs coming in from Amazon wanting them mounted and hooked up to the Cable/Satellite DVRs.

    Commercial/Educational seems to be still very good fishing. I know to never say never, but if don't see the bottom feeders moving into those spaces quite as fast due to the much smaller niche market aspect if it. Also, there's still a bit of technology learning curve to it.

    I am currently working on one 'new' Resi system. But it is using almost all existing used gear and they are not using it for TV control. It's pretty much just household control.
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    a_riot42a_riot42 Posts: 1,624
    ericmedley wrote: »
    Resi is just an ugly place to be right now no matter what your choice of control. The race to the bottom has just destroyed the vertical space.

    In some ways this isn't a bad thing. Since the resi market is so messed up right now, clients are left in a quandry. If you can help them out of this quandry, you will have lots of grateful, loyal clients. It makes doing resi more difficult, but if you can put together a reliable, easy to use system with all the features they want, you are bound to do well. I actually like the R4 although there are things I would certainly change about it. But given the alternatives, its not so bad in its current form. RTI's are more difficult to program to an AMX system, and there aren't many other remotes I like more that I've tried.
    Paul
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    DHawthorneDHawthorne Posts: 4,584
    RicardoSiqueira wrote: »
    DHawthorne. It is very said to see a top programmer like you leave the AMX residential market. My company mostly do residential projects and we are now doing some hybrid systems like AMX backbone with RTI remotes due to the lack of a good AMX remote control. The R4 doesn't cut it anymore. We do prefer the AMX flexibility over the competition, but it is getting more difficult to compete in the residential market with AMX only products. The iPad has saved us with the TPControl App in the past few years. I hope Harman has a better vision and do improve the residential market. What platform are you using now for residential projects?

    Savant for the large whole-house systems, and Control4 for smaller ones. URC for one-room stuff (which, back-in-the-day, you needed an AMX or C-tron for).
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