Harman Int’l opens new group office in India

“We are excited further to strengthen our presence in Asia and enhance our ability to serve our growing customer base in the region,” said Dinesh C. Paliwal,Harman’s Chairman,President and CEO. “Despite a tough global economic climate,we will continue to make the strategic investments in technology and market expansion to position Harman for profitable growth.”

Concurrent with the office opening,Harman continued the first public demonstrations of its scalable,next-generation automotive infotainment system. Designed in Harman’s India Development Center and leveraging the company’s deep engineering expertise in Europe and the US,the new software-based system extends the company’s audio and infotainment expertise to a broad cross section automakers.

“This new modular system meets automakers’ demands for flexible platforms that keep in step with today’s rapidly evolving multimedia technologies,” said Paliwal. “Our new scalable approach maximizes design efficiency while permitting automakers to bring media-rich infotainment to their customers at a variety of price points.”

Capping an intensive one-year design effort,the new scalable software and electronics platform marries automotive audio,navigation and wireless technologies with a new generation of connectivity options. Automakers can now cost-effectively offer media-rich information and entertainment systems by selecting from any number of feature modules that have been pre-integrated and tested on the Harman platform.

Using the company’s reliable QNX operating system software as its foundation,the system offers seamless recognition and playback of movies,music and other multimedia regardless of format; wireless connectivity to services such as Internet radio and social networking sites; and the latest in brilliant graphics and friendly user-interface.

Harman International markets a variety of consumer audio systems under its premium brands such as JBL,Harman Kardon,and Infinity.

Harman’s products are represented by authorized distributors HiTech Audio Systems of New Delhi and Sahil International of Mumbai. Sahil also operates JBL Entertainment Lounge and JBL Studio stores in New Delhi,Mumbai,and Bangalore.

Harman provides professional audio systems to leading entertainers and the venues where they perform,including the Miss India Pageant and FilmFare Award Gala’s,music festivals such as Rock Ethos in Bangalore,and to more than one million people who gathered at a recent political rally. The company expects to equip a number of key venues at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.