Bang&Olufsen slices 300 jobs

Following another quarterly loss, Danish luxury digi-goods maker Bang & Olufsen will cut 300 jobs and remove itself from both the mobile phone and mp3 player markets. "We will focus on further developing the core audio and video product portfolio which has made the company what it is today. We will, however, also focus on the …

[Anonymous Coward]

They make mp3 players and mobile phones?

Really? Ah, I think I might just have found their problem...

[Warhelmet]

Yes, but, no, but...

I've had the pleasure of using B&O kit in the past. Very nice. Amazing how good my craptop sounds when plumbed into a 25 year old hi-fi. Amazing how good a DVD looks on an old B&O crt telly. Hence the very strong second user market. There is a shop in Copenhagen that specialises in old B&O stuff. Been there, lovely...

I'm not surprised by the job cuts. Seen the BeoPhone - beautiful but pointless. I didn't even know that they did mp3 players - there is a B&O shop that I walk past everyday and never saw it promoted. Neither really fits with their core competancies - wringing the neck of analogue and beautiful design. You need meaty things for good design. It needs to be architectural.

[Anonymous Coward]

Luxuriously lame products

Not sure what their strategy has been with these now aborted product lines. Apparently they took perfectly agreeable Samsung platforms and turned them into decidedly awkward fashion accessories of limited functionality, with a clunky GUI resembling ceefax pages from the mid-1980s. Foolishness. Bang & Olufsen price tags are always one or two digits above anything other comparable product, and their increasingly ludicrous industrial design features can't justify the expense. Their Beo 5 product, the "ball and box" remote control demonstrates everything that's gone wrong for the once visionary company.

[fred scuttle]

It's all in the name......

"Seen-it..................bang" ................ Barry Scott eat your heart out!!!

Paris - coz she appreciates the value of a great Bang ;-)

[Neil Kay]

Emperor's New Clothes

Yes, they did/do some interesting stuff for people with more money than sense and a hankering for minimalist designs, but - what was it - £225 for a telephone?

Yeah, right.

Paris - because she knows when she's been shafted.

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazing..

I always wondered when the Bang would represent the sound of the B&O bubble bursting.

Sure they used to be nice, but since the 80's when they started re-boxing averagely good Hitachi VCRs and Philips OEM kit CD players (FFS, even one of the hobbyist electronics mags offered the same CD player in kit form) in shiny black plastic and brushed aluminium they've just been overpriced tat for people with more fashion sense and money than common sense.

Still, the speakers are nice. Not revolutionary or even particularly special, just nice.

Paris, because, as Fred said, she appreciates a good Bang and I bet she'd enjoy an Olufsen as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

B&O

B&O always did fantastic kit, based on quality of sound and vision. Mobiles and MP3 players were just some idiots idea of bandwagon jumping and completely went against what they are famous for. Next Rolls Royce will be releasing a diesel van.....

[doublejay1973]

reboxed

doesn't every know they are a design boutique reboxing phillips and samsung rather than a hifi company ?

they are a painful reminder of the 1980s.

[karakal]

Or...

...£1000 for a Samsung mobilephone...