Check out speaker as loud as a jackhammer
STARTUP Devialet, which makes the high- end Phantom music speaker popular with popstar A-listers, wants to broaden its appeal by selling a more affordable wireless version to a wider audience.
Shaped like a shiny white pod, the new US$ 999 ( RM4,196) wireless Phantom Reactor costs about US$ 2,000 less than its larger sibling. Less than nine inches wide and seven inches high, but with a maximum volume of 98 decibels, it’s nearly as loud as a jackhammer or, according to Devialet, a symphony orchestra playing at full force.
Devialet ships tens of thousands of Phantoms each year, said Chief Executive Officer Franck Lebouchard. But by selling through more retailers, including Amazon, he plans to move hundreds of thousands of the lower- cost model.
“We want to bring a pure sound — zero distortion, zero background buzz, zero saturation,” Lebouchard said in the company’s Paris offices, where he cranked up the volume to Hotel California by the Eagles. “We’re on a mission to bring that pure sound to more and more people.” Over the years Devialet’s Phantom — which costs between US$ 1,690 and US$ 2,990 — has wooed famous customers including Beyonce and Jay-Z, rapper Will.i.am, and Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan. The price tag climbed to 2,790 euros ( RM13,440) in Europe for a special edition version built for opera fans, complete with 22carat rose gold-plated sides.
Although the new Phantom Reactor sits in a different, and higher- end part of the market compared with products like Apple Inc.’s US$ 349 HomePod or Sonos Inc.’s US$ 199 One, consumers are nonetheless swarming to the attraction of these smart music speakers. In 2015, fewer than a million US households owned such a product, according to data compiled by Forrester Research. This year, 26.2 million households own one, and by 2022 that number is expected to more than double, to 66.3 million.
Founded 11 years ago, Devialet’s priority is sound quality, and it counts telecoms tycoon Xavier Niel, carmaker Renault, chipmaker Foxconn, and Bernard Arnault — Europe’s richest person and the CEO of luxury giant LVMH — among its investors who believe it’s on the right path. It’s raised 155 million euros to date but has no plans to seek more for now, Lebouchard said.