Sony Group Corporation is a Japanese multinational conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group comprises entities such as Sony Corporation, Sony Semiconductor Solutions, Sony Entertainment, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Financial Group, and others.
Consumer electronics or home electronics are electronic equipment intended for everyday use, typically in private homes. Consumer electronics include devices used for entertainment, communications and recreation. These products are usually referred to as black goods in American English, due to many products being housed in black or dark casings. This term is used to distinguish them from "white goods", which are meant for housekeeping tasks, such as washing machines and refrigerators. In British English, they are often called brown goods by producers and sellers. In the 2010s, this distinction is absent in large big box consumer electronics stores, which sell entertainment, communication and home office devices, light fixtures and appliances, including the bathroom type.
AC'97 is an audio codec standard developed by Intel Architecture Labs and various codec manufacturers in 1997. The standard was used in motherboards, modems, and sound cards.
NEC Corporation is a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics corporation, headquartered at the NEC Supertower in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. It provides IT and network solutions, including cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) platform, and telecommunications equipment and software to business enterprises, communications services providers and to government agencies. NEC has also been the largest PC vendor in Japan since the 1980s when it launched the PC-8000 series; it currently operates its domestic PC business in a joint venture with Lenovo.
Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI), also known simply as Analog, is an American multinational semiconductor company specializing in data conversion, signal processing, and power management technology, headquartered in Wilmington, Massachusetts.
Pioneer Corporation, commonly referred to as Pioneer, is a Japanese multinational corporation based in Tokyo, that specializes in digital entertainment products. The company was founded by Nozomu Matsumoto on January 1, 1938 in Tokyo as a radio and speaker repair shop. Its current president is Shiro Yahara.
A mixed-signal integrated circuit is any integrated circuit that has both analog circuits and digital circuits on a single semiconductor die. Their usage has grown dramatically with the increased use of cell phones, telecommunications, portable electronics, and automobiles with electronics and digital sensors.
Conexant Systems, Inc. was an American-based software developer and fabless semiconductor company that developed technology for voice and audio processing, imaging and modems. The company began as a division of Rockwell International, before being spun off as a public company. Conexant itself then spun off several business units, creating independent public companies which included Skyworks Solutions and Mindspeed Technologies.
Zoran Corporation was a multinational digital technology company, founded in 1981 and headquartered in Silicon Valley, that was predominantly focused on designing and selling SoC integrated circuits for consumer electronics applications. The name Zoran is derived from the Hebrew word for silicon. Zoran was incorporated in the state of Delaware and had offices in Canada, China, England, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the US. Zoran had strong ties with Israel, with a strong R&D presence and being the beneficiary of incentives from organizations such as Israel's Ministry of Industry and Trade.
Asahi Kasei Corporation is a multinational Japanese chemical company. Its main products are chemicals and materials.
The electronics industry is the economic sector that produces electronic devices. It emerged in the 20th century and is today one of the largest global industries. Contemporary society uses a vast array of electronic devices that are built in factories operated by the industry, which are almost always partially automated.
ESS Technology Incorporated is a private manufacturer of computer multimedia products, Audio DACs and ADCs based in Fremont, California with R&D centers in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada and Beijing, China. It was founded by Forrest Mozer in 1983. Robert L. Blair is the CEO and President of the company.
UNISOC, formerly Spreadtrum Communications, Inc., is a Chinese fabless semiconductor company headquartered in Shanghai which produces chipsets for mobile phones. UNISOC develops its business in two major fields - consumer electronics and industrial electronics. Consumer electronics includes smartphones, feature phones, smart audio systems, smart wearables and other related devices. Industrial electronics cover fields such as LAN IoT, WAN IoT and smart displays.
DSP Group, Inc. was an American company that manufactured chipsets for VoIP, multimedia, and digital cordless applications. Founded in 1987 with headquarters in San Jose, California, DSP Group employed over 400 people at three US sites and offices in Germany, Scotland, Israel, India, Hong Kong and Japan until it was acquired by Synaptics.
Mindspeed Technologies, Inc. was an American fabless semiconductor company that designed, manufactured, developed, and sold integrated circuits for communications applications in wireless and wired networks.
Crystal Semiconductor Corporation was an American computer company based in Austin, Texas, and active from 1984 to the early 2000s. Founded by Michael J. Callahan and James H. Clardy, the company originally specialized in the design and manufacture of silicon for mixed-signal integrated circuits, namely digital-to-analog (DAC) and analog-to-digital (ADC) converters. After being acquired by Cirrus Logic of San Jose, California, in 1991 for about $59 million, the company became a dominant player in the personal computer sound chip market.
Integrated Device Technology, Inc. (IDT), was an American semiconductor company headquartered in San Jose, California. The company designed, manufactured, and marketed low-power, high-performance mixed-signal semiconductor products for the advanced communications, computing, and consumer industries. The company marketed its products primarily to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Founded in 1980, the company began as a provider of complementary metal-oxide semiconductors (CMOS) for the communications business segment and computing business segments. The company focused on three major areas: communications infrastructure, high-performance computing, and advanced power management. Between 2018 and 2019, IDT was acquired by Renesas Electronics.
Schiit Audio is an American privately held audio company founded in June 2010 that specializes in the design, development, and production of various high-fidelity audio products targeted at the audiophile market, such as standalone digital-to-analog converters (DACs), headphone amplifiers, equalizers, preamplifiers, and speaker amplifiers, as well as combination DAC and amplifier products. The company is based in California with additional manufacturing operations in Texas.
