Harman Gets a PhatNoise Deal

By DT Staff Published October 25, 2009

The Harman Consumer Group, which owns the brands JBL and Harman Kardon among others, today said they would be acquiring PhatNoise out of Los Angeles. PhatNoise is best known for their after market PhatBox car MP3 player hard drive.

PhatNoise’s team will join the Harman Consumer Group’s engineering group in designing digital media systems in the automotive environment. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Recommended Videos

“PhatNoise is a remarkably talented organization focused on developing innovative solutions for acquiring, organizing, and enjoying digital media in the car. In its six-year history, the company has defined the leading edge of digital media systems in the automotive market and counts Kenwood, General Motors, Volvo, Mazda, Volkswagen and Audi among its customers,” commented Gina Harman, President of the Harman Consumer Group. “The addition of the PhatNoise team to our engineering group will greatly accelerate the delivery of innovative products for the automotive environment.”

“Given Harman’s enviable position as a proven leader in all aspects of automotive entertainment, this transaction is an excellent strategic fit for us and for our customers,” said Sharon Graves, PhatNoise CEO. “Ultimately, digital media in the car has to be about creating a great consumer experience. That has always been PhatNoise’s mission, and it is exciting to be joining a company that not only shares that goal, but also has such extensive market depth, experience and resources.”

Digital Trends has a simple mission: to help readers easily understand how tech affects the way they live. We are your…

Topics

Emerging Tech

AI bots are now trying to sabotage public health policies, like banning disposable vapes

Thousands of AI bots voted in a public health poll to block sales restriction on disposable vapes. It's like Big Tobacco is back from the dead.

Woman smoking a vape.

In the broad context of AI and its perceived harms, health and medical risks often pop up in the conversation. The warnings even come from frontier AI labs, such as ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which have warned about misusing AI to cook up bioweapons. Security experts have already spotted a few such incidents in the wild, especially with the usage of AI models without any solid guardrails.

Well, it appears that the risks run deeper. As per an analysis appearing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), AI bots are now being deployed to influence public policies governing health risks to citizens. In this instance, an attempt was made using AI bots to thwart regulations that aim to restrict the sale of disposable vapes, all while disguising the manipulation efforts as a response from real humans.

Emerging Tech

A tiny smartphone gadget can detect some of the nastiest chemicals in your water

Scientists built a tiny smartphone gadget that can spot toxic 'forever chemicals'

Smartphone-connected drinking water safety sensor Featured

What if checking your drinking water for dangerous chemicals were as simple as plugging a tiny gadget into your smartphone? Researchers in Japan have developed a compact sensor that could make that possible, potentially bringing sophisticated water contamination testing out of expensive laboratories and into people's hands.

Scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have created a portable device capable of detecting extremely low concentrations of PFAS, commonly known as "forever chemicals." The findings were published in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics, which demonstrate how an inexpensive sensor and a smartphone could make identifying potentially harmful chemicals in water a lot easier.

Emerging Tech

Did comets help life begin on Earth? New simulations challenge the idea

A Cambridge-led study finds that impact speed and angle made successful delivery extremely unlikely

Comet

Comets probably weren’t reliable couriers for the ingredients that helped life begin on Earth. A new Cambridge-led study found that fragile organic molecules would usually have been destroyed when the comets carrying them struck the surface.

Published in Scientific Reports, the research tracked hydrogen cyanide, a molecule involved in chemistry that can precede life. Rare successful deliveries remain possible, but the simulations offered little support for a steady supply from comets.