How French luxury speaker maker Devialet plans to become the 'Apple of sound'
French audio technology company Devialet sells high-end speakers that retail for over £1,000.
CEO Quentin Sannié wants to become the “Apple of sound” by partnering with other companies.
Apple CEO Tim Cook is a fan, and Android co-creator Andy Rubin bought 160 Devialet Phantom speakers.
It was 3 a.m. on a morning late in 2009 and Quentin Sannié, CEO of French luxury speaker maker Devialet, was crying alone in his house in Normandy while listening to a recording of Queen performing at Wembley Stadium in 1986.
“I had the first Devialet amplifier at home,” Sannié recalled in a recent interview with Business Insider. “[I was] listening to the music of my life and crying all night.”
Sannié is passionate about music, and talks about audio technology with the kind of enthusiasm that art collectors use to refer to their most prized artworks.
There has been no breakthrough in audio technology in 40 years, Sannié claimed. “Audio is the only domain where you can consider that one century-old technology could be considered by a lot of people [to be] the best technology ever.”
“The vacuum amplifier is considered by a lot of people [to be] the best technology ever to amplify sound … there is no domain, even the quality of the colours for the painting, the tools to cook, everything now is better than it was, except for audio.”
Sannié’s company Devialet is known for its flagship line of high-end speakers, named “Phantom,” which were launched in 2015. The devices can produce around 100 decibels (roughly the same volume as a jet taking off) of sound, and they retail from £1,390 in the UK.
Devialet’s speakers use a combination of analogue and digital amplification, a technology created by the company in 2004 which means that the analogue amplification delivers clear audio that’s played at high volume by the digital components of the speaker.
But Devialet has ambitions far broader than a range of oddly shaped speakers.
Devialet is working towards a ‘final goal’ — but Sannié won’t say what it is
Sannié said in his interview with Business Insider that the company is working towards a mysterious final goal and will partner with carmakers and television producers.
He told Business Insider that since his company was established in 2007, its goal has been to produce a definitive audio product. “It’s like you can imagine if Steve Jobs created Apple with the idea of the iPhone,” he said. “The goal of Devialet is to achieve that. But we know we need 10 to 15 years to be able to achieve it.”
So what is Devialet’s mysterious end goal? Sannié laughed when we asked what the product is and said he can’t tell us. But he explained that “the idea is everything we are doing is connected to that final goal.” He continued his comparison with Apple by likening his Phantom speakers to Apple’s first Macintosh computer — he sees them as the product line that introduces the purpose of the company.
The link between Devialet and Apple go beyond the company’s product strategy: Phantom speakers have been sold in some Apple Stores since 2015.
‘Our goal is to put technology everywhere’
Devialet announced in November that it had raised €100 million (£89.1 million) in funding from investors including iPhone manufacturer Foxconn and Jay Z’s entertainment company Roc Nation.
Sannié said that one area the money is being spent on is developing its technology. Devialet sees itself as becoming “the Apple of sound” or perhaps “the sound Intel,” Sannié said. To do that, he’s focusing on partnering with other manufacturers to embed Devialet’s technology in their devices.
“Our goal is to put our technology everywhere,” Sannié said. “You have to consider that the audio market is about 100 million units a year. But the whole sound market, [including] devices [such as] TVs, laptops, the smartphone, cars, is about 3 billion units a year. The audio market is only 3% of the global market we can reach with our technology.”
Devialet announced in July that it had collaborated with Sky on the Sky Soundbox, a soundbar speaker for televisions. It was the first evidence of Devialet’s str