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| Bose Corporation logo | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Consumer electronics |
| Founded | 1964 |
| Founder | Amar Bose  |
| Headquarters | Framingham, Massachusetts |
Key people | Amar G. Bose, Chairman, Founder Bob Maresca, President Thomas Froeschle, VP, Director of Research, Member of the Board |
| Products | Loudspeakers, Headphones, Audio equipment, Car audio |
| Revenue | $1.70 billion (2004) |
Number of employees | 10,000 |
| Website | www.bose.com |
The Bose Corporation is a privately held American company based in Framingham, Massachusetts that specializes in high-end[1] audio equipment and reinvests 100 percent of its profits in research and development. Bose products can be found in Olympics stadiums, Broadway theatres, the Sistine Chapel, and the Space Shuttle ( [2],[3],[4] [5])
Background
Bose develops and manufactures audio equipment including speakers, amplifiers, automotive sound systems, headphones, and most recently, automotive suspension systems. The company was founded in 1964 by Amar G. Bose, a professor of electrical engineering (retired in 2005) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. As of 2005, the company employed about 7,500 people worldwide (2,000 in Massachusetts) and had revenues of over $1.7 billion. Amar Bose is still the Chairman and primary stockholder, and also holds the title of Technical Director[6].
History of Bose Corporation presidents
- William (Bill) Zackowitz (1964-66)
- Charles "Chuck" Hieken (1966-69)
- Frank E. Ferguson (1969-76)
- Amar G. Bose (1976-80)
- Sherwin Greenblatt (1980-2000)
- John Coleman (2000-2005)
- Bob Maresca (Since 2005)
The company spends at least $100 million a year in research and engineering, employing a 6500 square meter (70,000 sq. ft.) building in Framingham reserved for that purpose.[7] In 2004, Bose purchased an additional site from HP in Stow, Massachusetts to house growing automotive and marketing divisions.[8]
Early years
In 1956, while a graduate student at MIT, Amar Bose purchased a high-end stereo system and was disappointed when it failed to meet his expectations. He later began extensive audio research aimed at fixing what he saw as key weaknesses plaguing such high-end systems. The principal weakness, as he saw it, was how the overall design of the loudspeakers and electronics failed to take into account psychoacoustics (the human perception of sound). Eight years later, he founded the company, charging it with a mission to achieve Better Sound Through Research (which is also the company's slogan).
Research history
During the company's first year in business Bose Corporation engaged in sponsored research. Its first loudspeaker product, the model 2201, dispersed 22 small mid-range speakers over an eighth of a sphere. It was designed to fit in the corner of a room, reflecting the speaker's sound as a mirror would for light in a corner cube and giving rise to an acoustical image of a sphere in a vastly larger room. Amar Bose used an electronic equalizer to adjust the acoustical output for flat total radiated power.
Although these speaker systems accurately emulated the characteristics of an ideal spherical membrane, the listening results were disappointing (some of the reasons for which are listed in a later publication from Bose's research department), leading Bose to further research into psychoacoustics that eventually clarified the importance of a dominance of reflected sound arriving at the head of the listener, a listening condition that is characteristic of live performances. This finding led to a revised speaker design in which eight of nine identical small mid-range drivers (with electronic equalization) were aimed at the wall behind the speaker while one driver was aimed forward, thus ensuring a dominance of reflected over direct sound in home listening spaces, replicating the dominant reflected sound fields listeners experience in live performances.
Before hearing his new design for the first time, although confident that his new design would produce a more faithful replication of the "live" listening experience, Amar Bose was unsure as to whether his new "direct/reflected" design would be a small audible improvement or a large one over his earlier design and the best commercially available loudspeakers. The new pentagonal design, named the Model 901, was a very unconventional design for speakers at the time (which were generally either full-size floorstanding units or bookshelf type speakers accompanied by a subwoofer that handled only the very lowest frequencies). The Model 901 premiered in 1968 and was an immediate commercial success, and the Bose Corporation grew rapidly during the 1970s.
Amar Bose believes that our imperfect knowledge of psychoacoustics limits our ability to adequately characterize quantitatively any two arbitrary sounds that are perceived differently, and to adequately characterize and quantify all aspects of perceived quality. He believes, for example, that distortion is much over-rated as a factor in perceived quality in the complex sounds that comprise music, noting, for example, that a square wave (a hugely distorted sine wave) and a sine wave are audibly indistinguishable above 7 kHz. Similarly, he does not find measurable relevance to perceived quality in other easily measured parameters of loudspeakers and electronics, and therefore does not publish those specifications for Bose products. The ultimate test, Bose insists, is your perception of audible quality (or lack of it) and your preferences.[9]
Additionally, the company researches portable audio within the fields of Circumaural and Supra-aural headphones, centering within the lines of Acoustic Noise Cancellation (See the separate article).
Automotive Suspension System
Another area of research and development at Bose Corporation is two-state, non-linear power processing and conditioning. Several early patents were awarded to Amar Bose and other Bose engineers and this technology is one of the key elements in an innovative project that the company disclosed in 2004 after more than 20 years of research[10], an automobile suspension system that uses electromagnetic principles instead of the hydraulics that are common today. This system uses electromagnetic linear motors to raise or lower the wheels of an automobile in response to un-even bumps or potholes on the road[11]. The wheels are raised when approaching a bump, or extended into a pothole, within milliseconds, thus keeping the vehicle steady. This technology is another application of Bose's active noise reduction technology for speakers and earphones. The unevenness of the road is sensed, processed much like a soundwave. A cancelling wave is generated, which is applied to the wheels through the linear motors. Amar Bose expects the system to be available commercially on high-end luxury cars by 2009.[12] In a French interview (3 minutes and 20 seconds into it) Bose even shows off the car jumping over an obstacle.[13]
Bose-Electroforce
In 2004 Bose acquired company assets related to the development, manufacture and sales of materials testing equipment, founding the ElectroForce Systems Group. [14]
Lines of products
Proprietary technologies
- Tri-Port Earcup Drivers
- Acoustic Noise Cancellation
- Acoustimass Technology
- Acoustic Waveguide Technology
- Direct/Reflecting Technology
- Psychoacoustic Equalization
- TrueSpace Technology
- Electromagnetic Suspension System for Automobiles
Products
Multimedia systems
Speaker systems
- Bose wave systems
- Bose stereo speakers
- Professional Speaker Systems for Commercial Applications
Home entertainment systems
- Bose Lifestyle Home Entertainment Systems
- Bose 3-2-1 Home Entertainment Systems
- Bose Acoustimass Home Entertainment Systems
Aviation Headsets
This headset is used in the Space Shuttle (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0880451.html)
Live Music and DJ systems
Opinions about Bose
A market study published in March 2006 by the independent market research firm Forrester Research reported that Bose's brand name was among the most trusted (by the US population) of consumer-electronics or computer brand names. [15]
Some people claim that the brand is sometimes derided[citation needed], ignored[citation needed], or disregarded[citation needed] in the audiophile and/or audio enthusiast markets (though the same can be said of any audio company and its products). It has also been claimed that the only mention the brand gets in audio enthusiast publications is invariably in editorials highly critical of some products[citation needed], and many audio specialty retailers do not carry Bose products.[citation needed]. However, despite claims that the only mention the brand gets in audio enthusiast publications is invariably in editorials highly critical of some products Bose products have received many positive reviews in various audio publications [16], [17], [18] and many speciality retailers do carry Bose products - a full listing of these dealers can be found on most Bose national websites - usually under dealer locator (example: the bose.co.uk site[19])
Some internet audio forums are filled with arguments for and against Bose and its products (for example [20], [21]), though it should be noted that such internet audio forums are filled with arguments for and against other audio companies and their products (for example [22], [23], [24], [25]) so Bose is not unique in receiving both critisizm and praise from posters on internet audio forums.
Unlike other major speaker manufacturers, Bose does not publish specifications relating to the measured electrical and acoustic performance of its products.[26] [27] It is sometimes Bose's non-publication of specifications that lead to poor reviews by objectivist audiophiles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audiophile#Subjectivists.27_criticisms_of_objectivism_in_audio), rather than actual product performance [28] [29]
Market share
In 2006 Bose ranked second in Home Audio retail, behind Sony (based on retail point-of-sale data for the period of January through October, 2006).[30]
Bose directly competes against the following companies in the consumer speaker and home theater market:
- Bang & Olufsen
- Boston Acoustics
- Cerwin-Vega
- Harman/Kardon
- JBL
- Klipsch
- Polk Audio
- Infinity
- Wharfedale
- Definitive Technology
Bose directly competes against the following companies in the consumer headphone market:
Locations
Headquarters
- Framingham, MA
Automotive division
- Stow, MA
Plants
- Framingham, MA
- Carrickmacross, Republic of Ireland
- Columbia, SC
- San Luis, Rio Colorado, Sonora, Mexico
- Tijuana B.C., Mexico
Number of retail stores
- Over 151 as of October 20 2006