Sound United To Aquire Pioneer & Onkyo Brands

Sound United To Aquire Pioneer & Onkyo Brands – You will be assimilated!

Sound United who currently owns Denon, Polk Audio, Marantz, Definitive Technology, HEOS, Classé, and Boston Acoustics have finalized plans to aquire Onkyo, Integra and Pioneer. This preliminary agreement will enable all companies to agree on terms and conditions.

Kevin Duffy, current CEO for Sound United, is to be the CEO of the newly combined businesses.

This merger probably makes Sound United the largest conglomerate of A/V companies in the world and with the combination of four AVR brands in their stable will outsize Yamaha. This acquisition puts them at the top of the AVR field for creating affordable, quality 4K, THX, multi-channel AV receivers for the mass market.

So what does this all really mean for the consumer? Assuming the acquisition and merger goes ahead, and depending upon you’re viewpoint, this could be perceived as a monopoly of the consumer home theater industry. Will it result in taking the ‘best’ of each manufacturers designs and just re-badging them for each brand, or will true innovation and development still continue for each of the brands? Cross-pollination is bound to happen as ideas and techniques are shared and as designs improve, streamlining the technical R&D development and helping to cut costs. Hopefully, each brand will still maintain its diversity and preferred techniques for their unique designs giving the consumer choice.

So while the merger will certainly provide Sound United with a base of AVR companies to create very cost effective and affordable home theater and audiophile equipment they do still maintain their higher end premium brands to include; Classé, Polk and Definitive Technology. All of whom continue to provide new innovations and technological improvements.

For now it looks like Sound United has become a force to be reckoned with in the A/V industry and others should start to ‘watch their back’. With the continued desire to cut costs and improve work efficiencies I suppose that these acquisitions are not surprising and will certainly set Sound United apart from many other A/V receiver and audiophile manufacturers.

See here for Sound United’s last acquisitions.

See here for the purchase of Paradigm, Anthem & MartinLogan by the Bagby Brothers.