Sennheiser

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Sennheiser electronic GmbH & Co. KG
Image:Sennheiserlogo.svg
Type	Private
Founded	1945 (as Labor W)
Headquarters	Wennebostel, Germany
Key people	Fritz Sennheiser, founder Jörg Sennheiser, CEO
Industry	Audio electronics
Products	Audio electronics for consumer, professional, and business uses
Revenue	€ 300 million (2006)^[1]
Employees	1,650
Website	www.sennheiser.com

Sennheiser electronic GmbH & Co. KG is a private German company that makes microphones, headphones, telephony accessories, and avionics headsets for consumer, professional, and business applications.

1 Company
2 Products
3 Background
4 History
5 References
6 External links

Company

Sennheiser is privately owned by the Sennheiser family. It has 1,650 employees, 60% of them working in Germany. Major subsidiaries of the company are Georg Neumann GmbH, which builds studio microphones, and Klein + Hummel, a producer of studio monitors. In 2003 Sennheiser Communications A/S, Denmark was announced, a joint venture between Sennheiser electronic and William Demant Holding Group, to develop and produce telecommunications products. In 2006, revenues of Sennheiser totaled € 300 million.

Products

Image:Sennheiser HD650.jpg

The Sennheiser HD650 open-air headphone

Headphones
Microphones
Aviation headsets
Multimedia headsets
Business headsets
Conference and Information Systems
Electronic sound-based components
Speakers

Background

The Sennheiser e845s microphone

Sennheiser is headquartered in the municipality of Wedemark, Germany (near Hanover). Its United States headquarters is located in Old Lyme, Connecticut. The company has factories in Burgdorf, Germany, Tullamore, Ireland (since 1990), and Albuquerque, New Mexico (since 2000). Sennheiser's R&D facilities are located in Germany and Palo Alto, California. Sennheiser has sales branches in France, the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, India, Singapore, Canada, Mexico and the USA.

History

The company was founded in 1945, just a few weeks after World War II, by Fritz Sennheiser and seven fellow engineers of the University of Hanover in a laboratory called Labor W. The laboratory was named after the village of Wennebostel, where it had been moved due to the war. Its first product was a voltmeter. Labor W began building microphones in 1946.

By 1955, the company had 250 employees. Labor W was renamed Sennheiser electronic in 1958. Sennheiser was transformed into a limited partnership (KG) in 1973. The company began producing modern wireless microphones in 1982. Also in 1982, founder Fritz Sennheiser handed the management of the company over to his son, Jörg Sennheiser.