Bose Corporation

The company was founded in Massachusetts in 1964 by Amar Bose with angel investor funding, including Amar's thesis advisor and professor, Y. W. Lee. Bose's interest in speaker systems had begun in 1956 when he purchased an audio system and was disappointed with its performance. The purpose of the company was to develop speaker systems which used multiple speakers aimed at the surrounding walls to reflect the sound and replicate the sound of a concert hall.

In 1966, after 10 years of research, the Bose 2201 was the first product sold by the company. It was an unusual design consisting of 22 speakers, with many of them facing away from the listener. The 2201 was designed to be located in the corner of a room, using reflections off the walls to increase the apparent size of the room. The 2201 failed in the marketplace and was discontinued the same year.

After this experience, Bose concluded that the audio system measurement techniques of the time (such as measuring distortion and frequency response) were ineffective ways to evaluate the goal of natural sound reproduction. Bose argued that the listener's perception was the best measure of audio quality. In 1968, the company introduced the Bose 901 stereo speaker system, which used eight mid-range drivers pointing toward the wall behind the speaker, and a ninth driver toward the listener. This design aimed to achieve a dominance of reflected over direct sound in home listening spaces. The design used for the 901 was unconventional compared with most systems, where mid-range and high-frequency speakers directly face the listener. The 901 was an immediate commercial success. As a result, Bose Corporation experienced rapid growth during the 1970s. The Bose 901 model name was a mainstay of the Bose line-up for many years, being produced from 1968 until 2016.

In 1991, a team of Bose researchers debunked a 1989 experiment that claimed to have created energy through cold fusion.

The first Bose retail store was opened in 1993 in Kittery, Maine.

In 2005, Bob Maresca was named president of Bose. Maresca had been promoted to vice president of Bose’s largest business, the Home Entertainment Division, in 2002.

In 2011, then-chairman and primary stockholder Amar Bose donated the majority of the firm's non-voting shares to his former employer and alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. An annual cash dividend is paid out to "advance the research and education mission of MIT." However, the conditions of receiving the shares stated that MIT was not allowed to sell them, nor was MIT permitted to participate in the company's management and governance. Following Amar Bose's death in 2013, Bob Maresca became the chief executive officer (CEO).

In June 2016, Bose and Flex manufacturing extended their strategic partnership, transferring Bose operations in Malaysia and Mexico to Flex.

Production facilities

Bose's products are manufactured in the United States, Mexico, China, and Malaysia. The company's factories in the U.S. are located in Framingham, Massachusetts (also the site of the company headquarters), Westborough, Massachusetts and Stow, Massachusetts. In early 2021, Bose Corporation notified the Town of Stow of the intention to vacate the 81.5 acre Stow campus after 18 years at the site, moving nearly 1,500 employees to the Framingham headquarters. The Bose factories in Mexico are located in Tijuana and San Luis Río Colorado. The Malaysian Bose factory is located in Batu Kawan and is the company's Asia-Pacific and Middle East distribution hub. In 2015, two facilities in Columbia, South Carolina, US and Carrickmacross, Ireland, were closed (with the loss of 300 and 140 jobs, respectively) as part of a global streamlining of Bose's supply chain. Bose used the Columbia facility, which opened in 1996, for distribution and repair, sub-manufacturing and regional manufacturing, and final assembly for some headsets. The Carrickmacross factory began operations in 1978 and did the final assembly for some home theater systems, Wave radios, and other regional manufacturing. The operation of the San Luis and Batu Kawan factories, which were opened in 1990 and 2013, respectively, were taken over by contract manufacturer Flex in 2016 and continued to produce Bose products.

Products

Automotive

Following an unsuccessful attempt to sell aftermarket car speakers, Bose's first OEM audio installation was in a MY1983 Cadillac Seville. Bose has since supplied audio systems for many car manufacturers, such as Acura, Audi, BMW, Chevrolet, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai-Kia, Infiniti, Jaguar, Lexus, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Porsche, and Ram. In 2007, the Bose media system won the International Telematics Award for the "Best Storage Solution for In-Car Environment."

A prototype active suspension system, using electromagnetic motors instead of hydraulic/pneumatic power, was unveiled by the company in 2004 and was due for release in 2009. However, it did not materialize due to weight and cost. The system used electromagnetic linear motors to raise or lower the wheels of a vehicle in response to uneven bumps or potholes on the road. The wheels are raised when approaching a bump (or lowered into a pothole) to keep the vehicle level, using principles similar to noise cancelling audio devices. A prototype car had been engineered to jump over an obstacle. The company said the system was too expensive and heavy, even after development for more than 20 years and costing $100 million. In November 2017, it was reported that Bose had sold the technology to ClearMotion. In May 2018, it was announced that five major car manufacturers had expressed interest in the technology and that it may be available in 2019 for low-volume vehicles and by 2020 for the mass market. In May 2025, Bose's active suspension was first put into production through one of ClearMotion’s investment partners, specifically a Chinese EV startup's flagship luxury sedan called the Nio ET9. ClearMotion have moved onward to the CM1 software centric electrohydraulic solution.

A truck seat system called Bose Ride was introduced in 2010. This active seat system aims to reduce fatigue, back pain, and physical stress experienced by truck drivers by reducing vibration from the road. Bose claimed up to a 90% reduction in driver's seat vibration.

Legal actions

Audio industry professionals have described Bose as a litigious company. In 1981, Bose unsuccessfully sued the magazine Consumer Reports (CR) for libel. CR reported in a review that the sound from the system they reviewed "tended to wander about the room." Initially, the Federal District Court found that CR "had published the false statement with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of its truth or falsity" when it changed what the original reviewer wrote about the speakers in his pre-publication draft, that the sound tended to wander "along the wall." The Court of Appeals then reversed the trial court's ruling on liability, and the United States Supreme Court affirmed in a 6–3 vote in the case Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union of United States, Inc., finding the statement was made without actual malice, and therefore there was no libel.

In an interview decades later Amar Bose said "We had 37 people at the time. I gathered them in one room and said, 'If we don't do anything, it will probably kill us. But if we do something, we have no credibility since we're just a small company, and we can't do anything against this.' I said I think we oughtta do something. I wanted a vote. It was unanimous in favor of taking action. Little did we know it would take 14 years to go through the legal process."

Bose sued Thiel Audio in the early 1990s to stop the audiophile loudspeaker maker from using ".2" at the end of its product model "CS2.2". To comply with Bose's trademark of ".2" associated with the Bose Model 2.2 product, Thiel changed their model name to "CS2 2", substituting a space for the decimal point. Bose did not trademark ".3" so in 1997 when Thiel introduced the next model in the series, it named it the "Thiel 2.3", advertising "the return of the decimal point."

In 1996, Bose sued two subsidiaries of Harman International Industries—JBL and Infinity Systems—for violating a Bose patent on elliptical tuning ports on some loudspeaker products. In 2000, the court determined that Harman was to cease using elliptical ports in its products, and Harman was to pay Bose $5.7 million in court costs. Harman stopped using the disputed port design but appealed the financial decision. At the end of 2002, the earlier judgment was upheld, but by this time, Bose's court expenses had risen to $8 million, all to be paid by Harman.

Bose was successful in blocking QSC Audio Products from trademarking the term "PowerWave" in connection with a specific QSC amplifier technology. In 2002, a court decided the "Wave" trademark was worthy of greater protection because it was well-known on its own, even beyond its association with Bose.

In 2003, Bose sued Custom Electronics Design and Installation Association (CEDIA), a non-profit electronics trade organization, for use of the "Electronic Lifestyles" trademark, which CEDIA has been using since 1997. Bose argued that the trademark interfered with its own "Lifestyle" trademark. Bose had previously sued to protect its "Lifestyle" trademark since 1996, with success against Motorola and then settlements against New England Stereo, Lifestyle Technologies, Optoma, and AMX. In May 2007, CEDIA won the lawsuit after the court determined Bose to be guilty of laches (unreasonable delays) and that Bose's assertions of fraud and the likelihood of confusion were without merit. CEDIA was criticized for spending nearly $1 million of its members' money on the lawsuit, and Bose was criticized for "unsportsmanlike action against its own trade association," according to CE Pro magazine.