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 Editions of reference works that repeat the Beijing address are out of date.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 for ¥120 million, 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].
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.
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
Sources
- 漫步者: 2025年年度报告 — Edifier 2025 annual report, published announcement — 新浪财经 (Sina Finance) (2026-09-19) ↩
- Our story — Edifier (2026-09-19) ↩
- Edifier revival: the legendary audio brand STAX — Edifier (2026-09-19) ↩
- Company profile — STAX Ltd. (2026-09-19) ↩
- Company — AirPulse (2026-09-19) ↩
- Edifier Innovations Technology (SHE:002351) Financials Overview — StockAnalysis (2026-09-19) ↩
- 漫步者2024年净利润增长7.06% — 证券时报 (2026-09-19)
- EDIFIER 漫步者创立于1996年 — 经济日报 (2026-09-19) ↩