Struggling B&O, Now Wants You To Pay $4k For A Networked Speaker
Struggling, with most retailers reporting poor sales for the Companies B&O Play products. Bang & Olufsen is now hoping that consumers will fork out more than $4,000 for a networked speaker.
Desperate for success the Danish Company who is struggling to turn around their fortunes after their shares slumped from A$22.09 to A$6.71 has backed a Google Assistant and Apple Play voice activated speaker to try and lure consumers back to the brand.
Their new offering is called the Beosound Balance, which has been described as a high-end smart speaker that is part carved out of timber.
The oak based speakers incorporate a pair of 5.25-inch bass drivers, which are integrated with two 3-inch full range drivers, two 2-inch full range drivers and a 0.75-inch tweeter that deliver a maximum of 104 dB high end sound.
The unlock key to the sound experience is said to be “Active Room Compensation” something that Sonos tried to get off the ground 4 years ago.
The beams of sound are supposed to deliver a clear acoustic experience from the “front and rich sound enhancement at the back” claims B&O engineers.
The Company who needed to be a player in the networked sound market outsourced the design to specialist designer Benjamin Hubert of Layer Design.
His creation includes a precision-crafted aluminum grill with a Fibonacci pattern with a touch panel located on the top of the speaker.
A “light-through-aluminum” feature disappears when it senses nobody is around or about to touch it.
As well as having the Google Home voice command option, the Balance can also be used as a regular Bluetooth speaker or as a Chromecast Audio device.
The Beosound Balance comes in natural oak (the light one) or dark oak (the darker one). It can also be teamed up for multiroom audio with B&O’s other connected speakers.
The Company has not explained why they did not launch with Amazon Alexa for the US market where Alexa is more popular than Google.
Final Pricing for Australia have not been announced.
