 | |
| Formerly | Zoom Telephonics (1977–2020) |
|---|---|
| Nasdaq: MINM | |
| Founded | 1977 |
| Founder |
|
| Headquarters | Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
Area served | Global |
| Website | www |
Minim, Inc., formerly Zoom Telephonics, is an American networking company that develops software and designs hardware for Internet security. Headquartered in Manchester, New Hampshire, the company offers a mobile app, cable modems, gateways, WiFi routers, mesh WiFi systems, and other home networking products with an emphasis on home automation. [1]
Zoom Telephonics was founded in 1977 as a home networking product manufacturer, headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. [2] The company was founded by Frank B. Manning and Bruce Kramer, two fellow roommates and graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who had known each other since the late 1960s. The company's first product was a modification kit for telephones that turned off the phone's ringer with the flick of a switch. Branded the "Silencer", it generated $200,000 in the first few years of Zoom's existence and prompted the founders to release more telephonic gadgets. The pair released an automatic dialer, called the "Demon Dialer", in 1980. Developed for customers of independent phone companies wanting to make long-distance calls, which required dialing call prefix and feature group digits, the product helped Zoom grow to $6 million in annual sales. The practice of demon dialing lends its namesake to this product. The "Demon Dialer" proved short-lived in usefulness after the breakup of the Bell System, which allowed these independent companies to harness so-called 1+10 dialing, so Zoom turned to developing dial-up modems for microcomputers such as the Apple II and the IBM PC. Their first modem, introduced in 1983 and called the Networker, was so popular that the company had difficulty finding enough shelf space in retail outlets, so Zoom's executives turned to mail order as an alternative sales channel. By 1987, the company had enough brand recognition to convince personal computer manufacturers, enterprise distributors, and high-volume retailers to stock Zoom's modems, and the company abandoned direct mail. In 1990, Zoom went public on the Nasdaq. [3] : 569–570
With the spread of the Internet in the mid-1990s, Zoom became a market leader in the modem business. Although the company contracted the manufacture of some of their cheaper products offshore at this time, some were still manufactured in their factory in Boston. Zoom's dominance waned with the advent of affordable broadband Internet in the early 2000s, however, and despite contracting factories in Mexico to manufacture Zoom-branded cable modem, most broadband customers were complacent with the ones provided by their ISPs. Between then and 2015, Zoom stagnated. [2] In 2015, the company reached a five-year licensing agreement with Motorola Mobility beginning 2016, to use the Motorola brand on its home network and cable products. Motorola had divested its existing Motorola Home business to Arris Group in 2013 (following the sale of Motorola Mobility to Google), but this primarily included a transitional license to the Motorola trademark in these segments. [4] Following this, sales rose 66 percent to roughly $17.8 million. Between 2017 and 2018, sales rose again, to $32 million. [2]
In December 2020, the company completed a merger with Minim, Inc. and rebranded to Minim.
On September 11, 2023, Minim announced it was exploring options in effort to save the company from permanent closure, including a potential Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. Effective immediately after the announcement, Minim slashed approximately 78% of its workforce. [5]
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded in 1928 as Galvin Manufacturing Corporation by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin. The company changed its name to Motorola in 1947. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, Motorola was split into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions, on January 4, 2011. The reorganization was structured with Motorola Solutions legally succeeding Motorola, Inc., and Motorola Mobility being spun off.
In the computer hacking scene of the 1980s, demon dialing was a technique by which a computer was used to repeatedly dial a number in an attempt to gain access immediately after another user had hung up. The expansion of accessible internet service provider connectivity since that time has rendered the practice more or less obsolete.
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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.
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A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by modulating one or more carrier wave signals to encode digital information, while the receiver demodulates the signal to recreate the original digital information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded reliably. Modems can be used with almost any means of transmitting analog signals, from light-emitting diodes to radio.
A mobile broadband modem, also known as wireless modem or cellular modem, is a type of modem that allows a personal computer or a router to receive wireless Internet access via a mobile broadband connection instead of using telephone or cable television lines. A mobile Internet user can connect using a wireless modem to a wireless Internet Service Provider (ISP) to get Internet access.
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