ViewSonic

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

ViewSonic Corporation

Type	Private
Founded	1987
Headquarters	Walnut, California, United States
Key people	James Chu, Founder, CEO
Industry	Computer
Products	Computer display
Revenue	$1.2002 billion (2005) USD
Website	www.viewsonic.com

ViewSonic Corporation is a manufacturer and provider of visual technology, specifically CRT monitors, liquid crystal displays, projectors, plasma displays, HDTV technology, and mobile products, including tablet PCs and wireless monitors.

The privately held company has approximately $1 billion in worldwide sales annually. ViewSonic's headquarters are located in Walnut, California, United States.

1 History
2 Products
3 Main competitors
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] History

The company was initially founded as Keypoint Technology Corporation in 1987. In 1990 it launched the ViewSonic line of color computer monitors, and shortly afterwards the company renamed itself after its brand. The founder, chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of ViewSonic is James Chu.[2]

A real adult Gouldian Finch

The ViewSonic logo features Gouldian Finches, colorful birds native to Australia, as a symbol of innovation, quality and value.

In the mid-1990s, ViewSonic rose to become one of the top-rated makers of computer CRT monitors, alongside Sony, NEC, MAG Innovision, and Panasonic. ViewSonic soon displaced the rest of these companies to emerge as the largest display manufacturer from America/Japan at the turn of the century. More recently, ViewSonic has been overtaken by Korean giants Samsung and LG, as the latter were at the forefront of fledging LCD technology.

In 2000, ViewSonic acquired the Nokia Display Products' branded business.^[1]

In 2002, a former employee of ViewSonic maliciously shut down a key company server. This prevented ViewSonic's Taiwan office from accessing the business's data, causing an estimated US$53,000 in damages.^[2]

In 2005, ViewSonic and Tatung won a British patent lawsuit filed against them by LG Philips in a dispute over which company created technology for rear mounting of LCDs in a mobile PC (U.K. Patent GB2346464B, titled, “portable computer.").^[3]

On July 2, 2007 the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to raise up to $143.8M in an IPO on NASDAQ.^[4]

On March 5, 2008, the company filed a withdraw request with the Securities and Exchange Commission saying "terms currently obtainable in the public marketplace are not sufficiently attractive to the Registrant to warrant proceeding with the initial public offering."^[5]

[edit] Products

A ViewSonic 17-inch LCD monitor.

In 1998, ViewSonic announced that two of its Professional Series monitors achieved TCO '99 certification.^[6]

In 2000, ViewSonic partnered with AT&T to offer Internet appliances integrated with the AT&T WorldNet Service, initially targeting the corporate market. The Internet appliances ranged from standalone i-boxes, integrated LCD and CRT devices, to web phones and wireless web pads. The units were deemed capable of operating on nearly any operating system, including Windows CE, Linux, QNX and VxWorks.^[7]

ViewSonic was the first manufacturer to bring Smart Display to the market, with the Airpanel V150 in early 2003. This included a 15" 1024×768 LCD, a 400MHz Intel XScale processor, 32MB ROM, 64MB RAM and 802.11b wireless, and a USB wireless hub for the host PC.^{[citation needed]}

At the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show, ViewSonic introduced display products, namely a projector, monitors and an HDTV set, capable of being connected directly to a video iPod.^[8]

The ViewSonic LCD monitor range currently includes 4 product groups, the VA value range^[9], the VG multimedia range^[10], the VX gamer range^[11], and the VP professional range^[12]. The 2 letter range codes are always used at the start of the product name followed by a number which indicates the diagonal screen size.