I've just come off the back of testing the Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3, a candidate for the best wireless headphones. One of the best parts of these cans is the epic sound quality, honed over decades to conquer the competition.
Now, as Samsung looks to acquire the British brand for its Harman Audio sub-brand (Via SamMobile), we might see the B&W logo and potentially even its tuning in the next pair of Galaxy Buds — or some other piece of hardware it has up its sleeves.
Following AKG's footsteps
In a somewhat surprising move, Samsung has actually moved to acquire a bunch of different high-end audio brands. There's the aforementioned B&W, but also Japanese classic brands Denon and Marantz, along with Polk Audio.
Those would go to join the other brands under the Harman umbrella, including Harman Kardon, JBL, and AKG. They wouldn't the first super-premium brands that Samsung has added to its belt either, with Mark Levinson already firmly within the group.
For B&W this could mean a number of things. More budget for research and development, for one. There is the potential for more restriction in ecosystems, although we haven't yet seen that with other Harman brands as yet.
One of the biggest things for Samsung and, users is that there's now another maker of fine audio gear to tune and add its name to Samsung headphones. Previously, we've seen "tuned by AKG" plastered across different Samsung audio hardware, and that could change to Bowers & Wilkins.
In the long run, it won't mean much for you, if anything. It does mean that even more luxury audio brands are no longer independent though, following Bose's acquisition of super-expensive HiFi amp brand Macintosh.
And part of me is sad about that. These are special brands with a special touch, and the great corporate machine getting its fingers into the pie isn't always good news.
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