WhereIsAtlas · China

How Edifier Ended Up Owning STAX

A Chinese maker of computer speakers, founded in Beijing in 1996, bought Japan's electrostatic headphone legend — three years before Samsung bought Harman.

Edifier was founded in Beijing in 1996 and is now registered and listed in Shenzhen as 002351. In 2012 it completed the acquisition of STAX Ltd., the Japanese maker of electrostatic headphones, whose lineage traces back to 1938. Founder Zhang Wendong remains chairman with about 26.7 per cent and the controlling shareholder has never changed. For 2025 the company reported revenue of about RMB 2.80 billion, down 4.97 per cent.

A company with an unusually boring ownership history

Most profiles on this site involve a sale, a merger or a collapse. Edifier's corporate history is the opposite, and that is the first thing worth saying about it.

Edifier was founded in 1996 in Beijing's Zhongguancun area by Zhang Wendong and partners, initially as Beijing Aidefa Technology [2][8]. Zhang, born in 1967 in Xi'an and a 1992 master's graduate of the Beijing Institute of Technology, told the Economic Daily in 2010 that the venture's assets at the start came to less than one million yuan [8].

The company listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in February 2010 as 002351 [1]. Zhang Wendong is still chairman, president and legal representative, holding roughly 26.7 per cent of the shares, and the company's filings record that its controlling shareholder has never changed [1].

That is genuinely rare for a Chinese consumer-electronics company of this age. There has been no conglomerate parent, no state consolidation, no founder exit. Where Anker went public and bought a brand family, and where Harman Kardon passed through a food conglomerate and a Korean conglomerate, Edifier has simply stayed under the person who started it.

One correction worth recording: the English Wikipedia article on Edifier gives its headquarters as Beijing and its headcount as 3,000. Both are wrong. The company's legal name is 深圳市漫步者科技股份有限公司, its registered address is in Shenzhen's Nanshan district, and its 2025 annual report puts employees at 2,665 [1]. Editions of reference works that repeat the Beijing address are out of date.

The quiet purchase of a Japanese legend

In 2012 Edifier completed the acquisition of STAX Ltd., the Japanese manufacturer of electrostatic headphones [1][3].

To see why that is strange, you have to know what electrostatic headphones are. Most headphones use dynamic drivers — a magnet moving a coil attached to a diaphragm. Electrostatics use a thin charged membrane suspended between electrodes, which requires a dedicated energiser rather than a normal headphone amplifier. They are expensive, fragile and made by very few companies in the world. STAX is the best-known name in the category, and its own corporate lineage runs back to the founding of Showa Onkyo Kogyo in 1938 [4].

A Chinese company best known in the West for budget computer speakers bought the specialist. The board approved the deal in December 2011 and completion was announced in March 2012; Edifier itself consistently dates the acquisition to 2012 [1][3]. STAX's own company page records a capital tie-up with Edifier, dating it to 2011 — the announcement year [4].

Who sold it. The counterparty is named in Edifier's own disclosure, and it was a single individual. The company's 2012 half-year report summary records that on 6 December 2011 Edifier signed an equity transfer agreement with Yozo Meguro (目黑阳造) to acquire the 100 per cent of STAX Ltd. that Meguro held, for JPY 120 million, paid in cash from Edifier's own funds [12]. The board resolution authorising it went out on 9 December 2011 as announcement 2011-038, which puts the yen consideration at about RMB 10.08 million at the exchange rate used [11].

That resolves a gap this entry previously left open, and it also fixes the currency. "¥120 million" is 120 million yen, not 120 million renminbi — roughly a tenth of what the headline number looks like if the symbol is read as yuan. For scale, that is a smaller sum than many single flagship loudspeaker launches, paid for a company whose brand lineage runs back to 1938.

The direction of travel matters. Audio acquisitions had usually run the other way: Japanese and Western firms buying into Asian manufacturing, or large groups absorbing smaller Western brands. This was a Chinese manufacturer buying a Japanese technology specialist three years before Samsung bought Harman International, and six years before Harman would add Bowers & Wilkins and Denon.

The rest of the brand family

Edifier's portfolio is broader than its Western reputation suggests. Alongside its own name it sells under Xemal, HECATE for gaming, Huazai for newer consumer products, and STAX SPIRIT — a headphone line that carries the STAX name into mainstream products [1].

AirPulse is the high-fidelity line, developed from 2004 in cooperation with the British designer Phil Jones, who founded Acoustic Energy in 1987 [5]. AirPulse sells reference-level active speakers rather than computer peripherals, and it is the clearest sign that Edifier's ambitions ran beyond the budget market.

Who holds the AirPulse name is a separate question from who sells it, and Edifier's own filings do not answer it. AirPulse does not appear in the subsidiary definitions of Edifier's annual report, which is why this entry calls it an Edifier brand rather than a wholly owned one. AirPulse's own company page names the holder directly: "The Airpulse brand is trademarked and owned by the Platinum Audio Systems Company, founded in 2004 by renowned speaker designer and audio engineer, Phil Jones in partnership with Edifier Technology Co., Ltd, manufacturer of Edifier speakers and headphones" [9].

That statement settles two things and leaves a third open. It confirms that the brand sits with Platinum Audio Systems rather than with the listed Edifier company, and it fixes 2004 as the founding year of that venture. What it does not give is the equity split — "in partnership with" could mean anything from a small minority stake to outright control, and no filing located so far publishes the percentages [9]. Edifier does disclose the shape of at least one comparable venture: for Lifa Air (Dongguan) Air Purification System Co., Ltd., Edifier has been reported as holding 70 per cent against LIFA Air's 30 [10]. That is a different company and does not transfer to AirPulse; it is recorded here only to show what the disclosure looks like when it exists.

There is also a step outside audio entirely: a controlling stake in LIFAair, a Chinese-Finnish air-purification venture established around 2015 [1].

The numbers, which are smaller than the brand list

Edifier is often described as one of the world's largest speaker manufacturers. The financials do not obviously support that, and no credible source for the claim could be found.

For the year ended 31 December 2025 Edifier reported revenue of about RMB 2.80 billion — roughly US$390 million — down 4.97 per cent, and net profit attributable to shareholders of about RMB 431 million, down 4.06 per cent [1][6]. It employed 2,665 people [1].

That is a substantial company. It is not a giant. For scale: more than 50 million cars carry Harman audio or connected-car systems, and Harman sits inside Samsung. Edifier's annual revenue is a rounding error beside that.

The directional shift is more interesting than the headline decline. Domestic revenue fell while export revenue rose from about RMB 632 million to about RMB 821 million, a rise of roughly 30 per cent [6]. A company whose home market softened grew its overseas sales — which is the turn that Chinese audio brands have been making for a decade.

The claim to avoid: the closest sourced statements to "the world's largest" are much weaker than they sound. Zhang Wendong told the Economic Daily in 2010 that in 2008 Edifier's product sales "ranked in the global top three" — the chairman's own assessment, of a year that is now long past [8]. The company's annual report describes its sales as having "entered the front ranks" of the industry, which is marketing as much as disclosure [1]. Sites that call Edifier the largest speaker maker in the world, or that quote a figure of eight million speakers a year, are going beyond the record.

What Edifier adds to this collection

Three Chinese companies now appear in this registry, and they illustrate three different routes into global audio.

Anker skipped retail and sold direct on Amazon, then built soundcore into a brand that competes with JBL on noise cancelling. FiiO built a following among enthusiasts with portable players and desktop electronics. Edifier did the oldest thing: it made speakers for a mass market, listed on its home exchange, and used the proceeds to buy a specialist.

Edifier is also the counter-example to the assumption that Chinese growth in this industry is a recent phenomenon. It was founded in 1996, listed in 2010, and bought a Japanese electrostatic manufacturer in 2012 — before most Western listeners had heard of any of these brands. And it did all of it without changing hands.

The company is not the biggest. It is, however, one of the few that has stayed exactly who it started as.

Entries in this story

More from the files

Sources

  1. 漫步者: 2025年年度报告 — Edifier 2025 annual report, published announcement — 新浪财经 (Sina Finance) (2026-09-19) ↩
  2. 漫步者 002351 — 2025年年度报告, disclosed 2026-03-28: the official filing, on the designated disclosure platform — 巨潮资讯网 (cninfo) / 深圳证券交易所 (SZSE) (2026-10-12) ↩
  3. Our story — Edifier (2026-09-19) ↩
  4. Edifier revival: the legendary audio brand STAX — Edifier (2026-09-19) ↩
  5. Company profile — STAX Ltd. (2026-09-19) ↩
  6. Company — AirPulse (2026-09-19) ↩
  7. Edifier Innovations Technology (SHE:002351) Financials Overview — StockAnalysis (2026-09-19)
  8. 漫步者2024年净利润增长7.06% — 证券时报 (2026-09-19) ↩
  9. EDIFIER 漫步者创立于1996年 — 经济日报 (2026-09-19) ↩
  10. Company Background — AirPulse (2026-09-21) ↩
  11. Edifier — Wikipedia (2026-09-21) ↩
  12. 漫步者：第二届董事会第十一次会议决议公告（2011-038） — 巨潮资讯网 (cninfo) (2026-09-21) ↩
  13. 深圳市漫步者科技股份有限公司2012半年度报告摘要 — names Yozo Meguro (目黑阳造) as the seller of 100% of STAX Ltd. — 证券时报 (Securities Times) (2026-09-21)