Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, Toshiba Corporation is a multi-international company and a global leader in the manufacturing and marketing of electronics products. As one of the early technological pioneers, its massive product line has evolved to span communications systems and equipment, social and industrial infrastructure systems, network solutions and household appliances. Also specializing in the chip business, Toshiba semiconductors stand among the world’s top 20 in sales and performance. The company itself is one of the world’s largest PC manufacturers, coming in fifth only behind Hewlett Packard, Dell, Acer and Lenovo.
Toshiba was originally founded in 1939 but its history dates back to the late 1800s. It was initially established from the merging of two companies: Tanaka Seizosho, which was founded in 1875, and Hakunetsusha, founded in 1890. It was not given the official name Toshiba Corporation until 1978. The company expanded rapidly through internal growth and acquisitions, investing heavily in engineering and industry firms to form subsidiaries in the electrical equipment and chemical fields among other sectors. Over the years, it has introduced a number of Japanese firsts. Some of Toshiba’s innovations include the TAC digital computer in 1954, the microwave oven in 1959, the laptop PC in 1996 and HD DVD in 2005. The quality of Toshiba chips made it one of the most successful semiconductors during the 1980s and that momentum has carried on to the current day. As of 2007, it was the third most profitable chip maker behind Intel and Samsung.
Today, Toshiba maintains its position as an industry leader with a diverse range of products and in-house companies. Some of the most notable divisions include Toshiba Laptops, Digital Products Group, Infrastructure Systems Group and Toshiba TEC Corporation. With regional headquarters located in Asia, Europe and the Americas, this company and their nearly 160,000 global employees available to keep the world thriving from the latest innovations.
Based in Taipei, Taiwan, TwinHan designs, produces and markets a wide variety of digital television solutions. The company has an extensive product line that includes digital TV reception cards, TV tuner cards, set-top boxes and personal computers. It also offers a number of services that aid in visual data processing, compression, encoding and decoding, IC and RF design, digital terrestrial video broadcasting, hardware design and system integration. TwinHan has an estimated 160 employees, more than half of them highly skilled in research and development, as well as facilities in Mainland China, Europe and the United States.
Based in Fremont, California, S3 Graphics is a top provider of graphics visualization technologies for desktop and notebook PC sectors. One of the major suppliers to the OEM and retail markets, S3’s products offer cutting edge efficiency to home, corporate and multimedia platforms to provide the end-user with enhanced visual features. While not as dominant as it once was, the company remains stable in the market with its S3 brand of graphics accelerators. This series rivals competitors, such as ATI Radeon and GeForce product lines.
Headquartered in the Silicon Valley of Taiwan, Realtek Semiconductor Corp. is a leading provider of computer components, network devices and multimedia products. The company designs, manufactures and sells a wide range of products that are mainly categorized in two divisions: Communications Network ICs and Computer Peripheral and Multimedia ICs. Some of the products in its line of network solutions include network interface controllers, traditional Ethernet controllers, network switch controllers and gateway controllers, among others. Realtek currently has approximately 900 employees, more than 700 of them well versed in the research and development field.
Headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan, Tyan Computer Corporation is a world renowned manufacture of motherboards. The company plays an integral role in powering the network environment as many of its models are designed for AMD and Intel processors. Specializing in high-end desktop and server platforms, its products are sold worldwide to OEMs, system integrators and resellers for a wealth of applications. Tyan’s high-performance products are powered by the more than 12,400 employee strong global workforce of MiTAC, the company it was acquired by in March of 2007.