Bose announced Wednesday that it will acquire Skullcandy, the lifestyle audio brand known for bass-heavy headphones. Skullcandy will remain a separate company within Bose’s premium consumer audio business and will continue to operate from Park City, Utah.
A partnership that led to an acquisition
The deal follows an existing relationship between the companies. Over the past year, Bose has provided audio expertise to Skullcandy through its Sound by Bose licensing program. Skullcandy designs the headphones and works with Bose on their audio systems. The partnership began with the Skullcandy Method 360 ANC earphones in 2025 and continued with the Crusher 1080 ANC headphones in July.
When WIRED spoke with Skullcandy CEO Brian Garofalo about the partnership in July, he emphasized the 23-year-old company’s ability to build community and culture, particularly within the boardsports community. Skullcandy’s first product was designed on a ski chairlift. Garofalo also acknowledged that the company is not “the best at the engineering part of product innovation.”
Reaching new customers
This is not Bose’s first audio acquisition, although it may be the company’s most mainstream. Bose acquired the McIntosh Group, which owns the premium audio brand McIntosh, and also owns Sonus Faber. With Skullcandy, however, Bose appears to be pursuing a connection to a different customer community.
“What does the brand stand for? Does it make sense to consumers? Does it relate to consumer groups that, frankly, aren’t being reached in other ways?” Bose CEO Lyla Snyder told WIRED. “If you think about McIntosh, Sonus Faber, and Skullcandy, they all fit into that space. Skullcandy gives us access to a customer base that I think is largely missing with the Bose brand.”
Bose does not plan to move Skullcandy from Park City, Utah, a center of boardsports culture, Snyder said. “We want to make sure we’re as central to it as we’ve always been,” she said. Skullcandy products are also more affordable than many Bose products and those of Bose-owned brands, giving the company a presence at both ends of the market.
Combining Bose engineering with Skullcandy’s identity
For WIRED’s headphone critic, Bose and Skullcandy may seem like an unusual pairing. Bose helped pioneer active noise cancellation (ANC) in headphones and continues to focus on that technology with products such as the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (2nd generation) and Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd generation).
Skullcandy, by contrast, has often been criticized for its sound quality. The brand is associated with midrange sound, overpowering bass, and loud, bold designs.
Recent collaborations have begun to challenge that perception. WIRED gave the Method 360 ANC earphones an 8/10 rating, highlighting their sound quality and ANC performance for the price. Snyder said the earbuds and the recent Crusher collaborations are only the beginning.
“This is the beginning of what we think we can do together,” she said.
The acquisition will reveal whether Bose’s audio expertise can give Skullcandy’s lifestyle brand the lasting momentum it has been seeking, in headphones and beyond.
Source: www.wired.com