Astec

Last updated

Astec International plc
FormerlyAstec (BSR) plc (1985–1999)
Industry Electric power conversion
Founded1971;53 years ago (1971) in Hong Kong
Founders
  • Brian Christopher
  • Neal Stewart
Defunct2014;10 years ago (2014)
FateDissolved
Number of employees
11,000 (2002) [1]
Parent
Website astec.com at the Wayback Machine (archived 2008-01-02)

Astec International plc, better known as Astec Power or just Astec, was an international electronics company originally based in Hong Kong that manufactured power supply units and electric power conversion hardware. It was a major vendor of power supply units for computer systems, and for a time it was the largest global manufacturer of power supplies. [1] [2]

Contents

History

Power supply unit from an Osborne 1 portable computer manufactured by Astec PSU PCB (Osborne 1A).jpg
Power supply unit from an Osborne 1 portable computer manufactured by Astec

Astec was founded in British Hong Kong in 1971 [1] by Brian Christopher and Neal Stewart, as a producer of DC-to-DC converter hardware. [3] : 41  [4] Before founding Astec, Christopher had previously worked for IBM, while Stewart was an academic physicist. The company was founded with HK$2.4 million in start-up capital. [5]

Astec's converters were initially purchased chiefly by manufacturers of electronic calculators, a market which was experiencing meteoric growth in the early 1970s. As the calculator market waned in the late 1970s, Astec started producing switched-mode power supply for the burgeoning personal computer market. [4] In 1977, Astec signed a contract with Apple Computer to become the primary supplier of PSUs for their Apple II family of home computer systems. [6] [7] In 1981, IBM contracted Astec to manufacture the power supply unit of the original IBM PC. Their relationship with IBM lasted well over a decade and won them contracts with other computer vendors such as Hewlett-Packard. [6] [8] Helped by these lucrative contracts, Astec grew to become the world's largest manufacturer of power supply units by 1985, taking the top spot from Lambda Electronics. [7] [9] The company were helped especially by their relationship with Apple, which had netted Astec $50 million in sales alone by June 1983. [9]

Birmingham Sound Reproducers (BSR), a British manufacturer of home audio equipment, purchased a controlling 53.6-percent stake in the company in May 1980. [10] In 1981, BSR purchased the remaining 46.4 percent in Astec, acquiring the company outright. [11] BSR had been struggling from debt and diminished sales around the time of the purchase, with Astec being BSR's only profitable asset in the fiscal year 1980, generating £1.3 million while the rest of the company posted losses in excess of £17.6 million. [3] : 45  [12] The acquisition of Astec was a success for BSR and saved the parent company from bankruptcy. [12] [13] By 1984, BSR began shedding its home audio assets as computer power supplies became the company's core business. [12] By the late 1980s, BSR was renamed to Astec (BSR) plc. [14] : D-1 

In 1989, Emerson Electric, an American manufacturer of electronic equipment, purchased a controlling stake (between 45 and 50 percent) in Astec (BSR) plc in exchange for several of Emerson's subsidiaries, including its largest power supply unit manufacturer ACDC Electronics. [15] Emerson shortly after consolidated five of their other subsidiaries into Astec, massively growing the latter company. [2] In 1999 Emerson acquired the remaining half of Astec outright. Sales in Astec began dwindling in the early 2000s amid the concurrent global downturn in the computer industry, [2] and in 2006 Emerson folded Astec into Artesyn, another large power conversion company which Emerson had acquired that year. [16] Astec remained a division of Artesyn until 2014, when it was folded into the newly formed Artesyn Embedded Technologies, a company formed in the aftermath of Emerson's divestiture of Artesyn in 2013. [17]

Related Research Articles

Spectravideo International Limited (SVI) was an American computer manufacturer and software house. It was originally called SpectraVision, a company founded by Harry Fox in 1981. The company produced video games and other software for the VIC-20 home computer, the Atari 2600 home video game console, and its CompuMate peripheral. Some of their own computers were compatible with the Microsoft MSX or the IBM PC.

VTech Holdings Limited is a Hong Kongese company of children's electronic learning products. It is the world's largest manufacturer of baby monitors and cordless phones. It was founded in October 1976 by Allan Wong (Chi-Yun) and Stephen Leung.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AST Research</span> American computer manufacturer (1980–1999)

AST Research, Inc., later doing business as AST Computer, was a personal computer manufacturer. It was founded in 1980 in Irvine, California, by Albert Wong, Safi Qureshey, and Thomas Yuen, as an initialism of their first names. In the 1980s, AST designed add-on expansion cards, and evolved toward the 1990s into a major personal computer manufacturer. AST was acquired by Samsung Electronics in 1997 but was de facto closed in 1999 due to a series of losses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Computer tower</span> Computer case that stands vertically upright

In personal computing, a tower unit, or simply a tower, is a form factor of desktop computer case whose height is much greater than its width, thus having the appearance of an upstanding tower block, as opposed to a traditional "pizza box" computer case whose width is greater than its height and appears lying flat.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zenith Data Systems</span> American computer company (1979–1996)

Zenith Data Systems Corporation (ZDS) was an American computer systems manufacturing company active from 1979 to 1996. It was originally a division of the Zenith Radio Company, after they had purchased the Heath Company and, by extension, their Heathkit line of electronic kits and kit microcomputers, from Schlumberger in October 1979. ZDS originally operated from Heath's own headquarters in St. Joseph, Michigan. By the time Zenith acquired Heathkit, their H8 kit computer already had an installed fanbase of scientific engineers and computing enthusiasts. ZDS' first offerings were merely preassembled versions of existing Heathkit computers, but within a few years, the company began selling bespoke systems, including the Z-100, which was a hybrid 8085- and 8088-based computer capable of running both CP/M and MS-DOS.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Orion Electric</span> Japanese consumer electronics company

Orion Co., Ltd. was a Japanese consumer electronics company that was established in 1958 in Osaka, Japan. Their devices were branded as "Orion".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maplin (retailer)</span> British electronics retailer

Maplin Electronics is the trading name of an online retailer of electronic goods in the United Kingdom and Ireland launched in 2019, using the brand of the former company Maplin Electronics Limited, which operated from 1972 to 2018.

PC Power and Cooling, a subsidiary of FirePower Technology, is an American manufacturer of computer power supplies based in Carlsbad, California. The company was established by Doug Dodson in 1985. In 2007, the company was acquired by OCZ Technology. In 2014, FirePower Technology acquired OCZ Technology Group's power supply division, which included PC Power and Cooling.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Farr (businessman)</span> American business executive

David Nelson Farr is an American business executive. He was the chairman and CEO of Emerson Electric Company, a Fortune 500 company. Farr has worked at the company since 1981 and retired as CEO on Feb 5, 2021. He is married to Lelia Far, with whom he has two children, and is a resident of Ladue, Missouri.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Birmingham Sound Reproducers</span>

Birmingham Sound Reproducers (BSR) was a 20th-century British manufacturer of record player turntables, reel-to-reel tape recorder mechanisms and, for a time, housewares.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blue Chip Electronics</span> Former American computer company

Blue Chip Electronics, Inc., later Blue Chip International, was an American computer company founded by John Rossi in 1982. Founded to develop peripherals for Commodore home computers, the company in 1986 began selling low-cost IBM PC compatibles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DTK Computer</span> Taiwanese computer company

DTK Computer is the name for international branches of Datatech Enterprises, a Taiwanese computer manufacturer. Founded in 1981, the company was an early supplier of peripherals for IBM PCs as well as PC compatible motherboards. In the late 1980s, the company switched to developing complete systems under the DTK name as well as serving as an OEM for motherboards and cases, as bought by other small computer companies and systems integrators.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hi-Tek Corporation</span> Defunct American electronics company

Hi-Tek Corporation was an American electronics company based in California. At first making relays, actuators, and timers in the 1960s, the company pivoted to the manufacture of keyboard assemblies and discrete keyswitches in the late 1970s. They proved successful in the keyboard business, gaining clients such as Hewlett-Packard and Texas Instruments, and were acquired by Nippon Miniature Bearing in 1983.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Keyboard Company</span> Defunct American computer peripheral manufacturer

The Keyboard Company, Inc., was an American electronics company based in Garden Grove, California. It was contracted by Apple Computer to produce the keyboards of their microcomputers in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The company also produced a number of peripherals separately for Apple's systems. Apple acquired the company in 1982 and renamed it the Apple Accessory Products Division (APD).

Amdek Corporation was an American computer peripheral and system manufacturer active from 1977 to the mid-1990s. The company was renowned for their standalone computer monitors compatible with a wide array of systems from the early microcomputer era to the personal computer age. According to PC World in 1994, "Amdek was once the name in PC monitors. Chances are the monochrome monitors most of us used once carried the Amdek label." In the early 1980s, the company was majority owned by the Roland Corporation's Taiwanese subsidiary; in 1986, after a brief period of independence, the company was acquired by Wyse Technology, a maker of computer terminals, who continued the Amdek brand into at least 1995.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tava Corporation</span> American computer company

Tava Corporation was a short-lived American computer company that was active from 1983 to 1984 and based in Irvine, California. It was an early manufacturer of IBM PC compatibles. It also operated the CompuShack chain of franchised computer retail stores across the United States.

Leading Technology, Inc., was an American computer company based in Beaverton, Oregon, and active from 1985 to 1992. It sold IBM PC–compatible computer systems, monitors, and other peripherals supplied by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan. In 1992, the company was purchased by VTech of Hong Kong.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Future Domain</span> American computer hardware company

Future Domain Corporation was a privately held American computer hardware company active from 1982 to 1995 and based in Orange County, California. The company was among the first to produce Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) device controller expansion cards, later controller ICs. It was acquired by Adaptec in 1995 for US$25 million.

Datacopy Corporation was an American computer hardware company independently active from 1973 to 1988. The company was a pioneer in the field of digital imaging, especially image scanners for personal computers. It was acquired by Xerox in 1988 and folded into their Xerox Imaging Systems subsidiary.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Wai-Chung Yeung, Henry (2002). Transnational Corporations and Business Networks: Hong Kong Firms in the ASEAN Region. Taylor & Francis. p. 229. ISBN   9781134826391 – via Google Books.
  2. 1 2 3 Staff writer (March 30, 2001). "Astec looks to supply more power". EDN. UBN Canon. Archived from the original on October 29, 2024.
  3. 1 2 Staff writer (April 22, 1983). "Wyllie's big ideas for BSR". Investors Chronicle. 66. Throgmorton Publications: 41–45 – via Google Books.
  4. 1 2 Staff writer (May 15, 1999). "Astec: Leading merchant power supply manufacturer continues 25-year tradition of innovation, quality, and service". ECN. Cahners Business Information: 112 – via ProQuest.
  5. ↑ Wood, Christopher (August 11, 1983). "Astec's reverse takeover turns the tables". Far Eastern Economic Review: 62 – via Google Books.
  6. 1 2 Mpitziopoulos, Aris (July 3, 2016). "Apple I and II: Switching PSU and the Lack of Cooling Fans". Tom's Hardware. Future Publishing. Archived from the original on September 24, 2024.
  7. 1 2 Socolovsky, A.; M. F. Foley (July 1983). "Switching Supplies Grow in the Bellies of Computers". Electronic Business. 9 (7). Reed Business Information: 120 – via Gale.
  8. ↑ Mueller, Scott (1999). Upgrading and Repairing PCs (11th ed.). Que. p. 1133. ISBN   9780789719034 – via Google Books.
  9. 1 2 Mehler, Mark (April 1, 1985). "Standards: A Switch in Time for Supplies". Electronic Business Buyer. 11. Cahners Publishing Company: 74 – via Google Books.
  10. ↑ Brown, Maggie (April 25, 1981). "BSR in £20m Hong Kong deal". The Guardian: 19 – via Newspapers.com.
  11. ↑ Staff writer (June 25, 1981). "£5.3m setback at Trusthouse". Manchester Evening News: 18 – via Newspapers.com.
  12. 1 2 3 "BSR: A High-Tech Rebirth in Hong Kong for a British Stereo Maker". Bloomberg Businessweek (2863). Bloomberg LP: 99. October 8, 1984 – via ProQuest.
  13. ↑ Brown, Maggie (March 26, 1982). "BSR finds a pot of gold in Far East". The Guardian: 19 – via Newspapers.com.
  14. ↑ Christoffersen, John (August 6, 1989). "ACDC purchase brings headquarters here". North County Times: D-1, D-8 – via Newspapers.com.
  15. ↑ Christoffersen, John (August 23, 1989). "Electronics firm blossoms in area". North County Times: D-5 – via Newspapers.com.
  16. ↑ Staff writer (February 2, 2006). "Emerson acquires power supplier Artesyn". EETimes. AspenCore. Archived from the original on October 29, 2024.
  17. ↑ Shepard, Jeff (February 5, 2014). "Artesyn Embedded Technologies Rebranding Under new Ownership". EEPower. EETech Group. Archived from the original on October 29, 2024.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.