1.
Qualcomm
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Qualcomm is an American multinational semiconductor and telecommunications equipment company that designs and markets wireless telecommunications products and services. It derives most of its revenue from chipmaking and the bulk of its profit from patent licensing businesses, the company headquarters are located in San Diego, California, United States, and has 224 worldwide locations. The parent company is Qualcomm Incorporated, which includes the Qualcomm Technology Licensing Division, Jacobs and Viterbi had previously founded Linkabit. In 1990, Qualcomm began the design of the first CDMA-based cellular base station and this work began as a study contract from AirTouch which was facing a shortage of cellular capacity in Los Angeles. Two years later Qualcomm began to manufacture CDMA cell phones, base stations, the initial base stations were not reliable and the technology was licensed wholly to Nortel in return for their work in improving the base station switching. The first CDMA technology was standardized as IS-95, Qualcomm has since helped to establish the CDMA2000, WCDMA and LTE cellular standards. The following year, Qualcomm acquired Eudora, a client for PC that could be used with the OmniTRACS system. The acquisition associated a widely used email client with a company that was little-known at the time, in 1997, Qualcomm paid $18 million for the naming rights to the Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego, renaming it to Qualcomm Stadium. The naming rights belong to Qualcomm until 2017. In 1999, Qualcomm sold its base station business to Ericsson, the company was now focused on developing and licensing wireless technologies and selling ASICs that implement them. Steve Mollenkopf was promoted to president and chief operating officer of the company, mollenkopfs appointment as CEO was announced on December 13,2013 and took effect on March 4,2014. He succeeded Paul E. Jacobs, who remains executive chairman, CFO Bill Keitel retired and was replaced by Applied Materials CFO George Davis on March 11,2013. Vista Equity Partners took over the Omnitracs business from Qualcomm Incorporated in November 2013, in October 2014, Qualcomm wrapped up a deal for chip maker CSR Plc for a fee of $2.5 billion, beating its biggest rival Microchip Technology. However, surprised by the release of the 64-bit Apple A7 in September 2013, furthermore, Qualcomm was facing anti-trust investigations in China, the European Union, and the United States. The combination of pressures caused a significant fall in Qualcomms profits. In July 2015, the company cut 4,700 jobs or about 15 percent of its 31,300 current workforce due to decline of sales, executive management knew this was coming so they came up with a plan to retain its employees. However, instead of paying reasonable salary, executive management used this plan as a justification to give themselves a big payout first and then lay off employees later. In December 2015, Qualcomm Inc. announced that it had rejected calls to split itself in two, deciding to keep its chipmaking and patent licensing businesses together
2.
Ticker symbol
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A ticker symbol or stock symbol is an abbreviation used to uniquely identify publicly traded shares of a particular stock on a particular stock market. A stock symbol may consist of letters, numbers or a combination of both, ticker symbol refers to the symbols that were printed on the ticker tape of a ticker tape machine. Stock symbols are unique identifiers assigned to each security traded on a particular market, for example, AAPL is for Apple Inc. OODH is for Orion DHC, Inc. and HD is for Home Depot, a stock symbol can consist of letters, numbers, or a combination of both, and is a way to uniquely identify that stock. The symbols were kept as short as possible to reduce the number of characters that had to be printed on the ticker tape, the allocation of symbols and formatting convention is specific to each stock exchange. In the US, for example, stock tickers are typically between 1 and 4 letters and represent the name where possible. In Europe, most exchanges use three-letter codes, for example Dutch consumer goods company Unilever traded on the Amsterdam Euronext exchange has the symbol UNA, while in Asia, numbers are often used as stock tickers to avoid issues for international investors when using non-Latin scripts. For example, the bank HSBCs stock traded on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange has the ticker symbol 0005, symbols sometimes change to reflect mergers. Prior to the 1999 merger with Mobil Oil, Exxon used a spelling of the company XON as its ticker symbol. The symbol of the firm after the merger was XOM, symbols are sometimes reused, in the US the single-letter symbols are particularly sought after as vanity symbols. For example, since Mar 2008 Visa Inc. has used the symbol V that had previously used by Vivendi which had delisted. To fully qualify a stock, both the ticker and the exchange or country of listing needs to be known, on many systems both must be specified to uniquely identify the security. This is often done by appending the location or exchange code to the ticker, although stock tickers identify a security, they are exchange dependent, generally limited to stocks and can change. These limitations have led to the development of other codes in financial markets to identify securities for settlement purposes, the most prevalent of these is the International Securities Identifying Number. An ISIN uniquely identifies a security and its structure is defined in ISO6166, Securities for which ISINs are issued include bonds, commercial paper, stocks, and warrants. The ISIN identifies the security, not the exchange on which it trades, for instance, Daimler AG stock trades on twenty-two different stock exchanges worldwide, and is priced in five different currencies, it has the same ISIN on each, though not the same ticker symbol. ISIN cannot specify a particular trade in this case, and another identifier, following the introduction of the Sequence trading platform in 1996, EPICs were renamed Tradable Instrument Display Mnemonics, but they are still widely referred to as EPICs. Stocks can also be identified using their SEDOL number or their ISIN, in the United States, modern letter-only ticker symbols were developed by Standard & Poors to bring a national standard to investing
3.
NASDAQ
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The Nasdaq Stock Market is an American stock exchange. It is the second-largest exchange in the world by market capitalization, the exchange platform is owned by Nasdaq, Inc. which also owns the Nasdaq Nordic and Nasdaq Baltic stock market network and several other US stock and options exchanges. When it was founded, NASDAQ stood for the acronym of National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations, NASDAQ was founded in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers, which divested itself of NASDAQ in a series of sales in 2000 and 2001. The Nasdaq Stock Market is owned and operated by Nasdaq, Inc. the stocks of which were listed on its own stock exchange marketing July 2,2002, when the Nasdaq Stock Market began trading on February 8,1971, it was the worlds first electronic stock market. At first, it was merely a system and did not provide a way to perform electronic trades. The Nasdaq Stock Market helped lower the spread but was unpopular among brokerages which made much of their money on the spread. As late as 1987, the NASDAQ exchange was still referred to as OTC in media. Over the years, the Nasdaq Stock Market became more of a market by adding trade and volume reporting. The Nasdaq Stock Market attracted new companies such as Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, Oracle and Dell. Its main index is the NASDAQ Composite, which has published since its inception. In 1992, the Nasdaq Stock Market joined with the London Stock Exchange to form the first intercontinental linkage of securities markets, the National Association of Securities Dealers spun off the Nasdaq Stock Market in 2000 to form a publicly traded company. In 2006, the status of the Nasdaq Stock Market was changed from a market to a licensed national securities exchange. In 2007, Nasdaq merged with OMX, an exchange operator in the Nordic countries, expanded its global footprint. NASDAQ OMX could be looking to acquire the American exchanges cash equities business, at the time, NYSE Euronext’s market value was $9.75 billion. Nasdaq was valued at $5.78 billion, while ICE was valued at $9.45 billion. Late in the month, Nasdaq was reported to be considering asking either ICE or the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to join in what would probably have to be, if it proceeded, an $11–12 billion counterbid. The European Association of Securities Dealers Automatic Quotation System was founded as a European equivalent to the Nasdaq Stock Market and it was purchased by NASDAQ in 2001 and became NASDAQ Europe. Operations were shut down, however, as a result of the burst of the dot-com bubble, in 2007, NASDAQ Europe was revived as Equiduct, and is currently operating under Börse Berlin
4.
Electronics
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Electronics is the science of controlling electrical energy electrically, in which the electrons have a fundamental role. Commonly, electronic devices contain circuitry consisting primarily or exclusively of active semiconductors supplemented with passive elements, the science of electronics is also considered to be a branch of physics and electrical engineering. The ability of electronic devices to act as switches makes digital information processing possible, until 1950 this field was called radio technology because its principal application was the design and theory of radio transmitters, receivers, and vacuum tubes. Today, most electronic devices use semiconductor components to perform electron control and this article focuses on engineering aspects of electronics. Components are generally intended to be connected together, usually by being soldered to a circuit board. Components may be packaged singly, or in more complex groups as integrated circuits, some common electronic components are capacitors, inductors, resistors, diodes, transistors, etc. Components are often categorized as active or passive, vacuum tubes were among the earliest electronic components. They were almost solely responsible for the revolution of the first half of the Twentieth Century. They took electronics from parlor tricks and gave us radio, television, phonographs, radar, long distance telephony and they played a leading role in the field of microwave and high power transmission as well as television receivers until the middle of the 1980s. Since that time, solid state devices have all but completely taken over, vacuum tubes are still used in some specialist applications such as high power RF amplifiers, cathode ray tubes, specialist audio equipment, guitar amplifiers and some microwave devices. The 608 contained more than 3,000 germanium transistors, thomas J. Watson Jr. ordered all future IBM products to use transistors in their design. From that time on transistors were almost exclusively used for computer logic, circuits and components can be divided into two groups, analog and digital. A particular device may consist of circuitry that has one or the other or a mix of the two types, most analog electronic appliances, such as radio receivers, are constructed from combinations of a few types of basic circuits. Analog circuits use a range of voltage or current as opposed to discrete levels as in digital circuits. The number of different analog circuits so far devised is huge, especially because a circuit can be defined as anything from a single component, analog circuits are sometimes called linear circuits although many non-linear effects are used in analog circuits such as mixers, modulators, etc. Good examples of analog circuits include vacuum tube and transistor amplifiers, one rarely finds modern circuits that are entirely analog. These days analog circuitry may use digital or even microprocessor techniques to improve performance and this type of circuit is usually called mixed signal rather than analog or digital. Sometimes it may be difficult to differentiate between analog and digital circuits as they have elements of both linear and non-linear operation, an example is the comparator which takes in a continuous range of voltage but only outputs one of two levels as in a digital circuit
5.
High Tech Campus Eindhoven
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The High Tech Campus Eindhoven is a high tech center and R&D ecosystem on the Southern edge of the Dutch city of Eindhoven. In 2016, the High Tech Campus is home to more than 140 companies and institutions, comprising over 10,000 R&D-staff and entrepreneurs, one of the main goals of the campus is to foster cooperation between companies. The high density of research and business people forms what the Brookings Institution terms an Innovation District, the establishment of a trusted ecosystem encourages a faster exchange of ideas in order to enhance technological and product development. This explains why the campus is considered to be an active business ecosystem, Philips was the original driving force behind the establishment of High Tech Campus Eindhoven. At the end of the 1990s, the R&D activities of the company were spread right across the city of Eindhoven, in 1998, Philips established the Philips High Tech Campus to act as a single location for all its international R&D activities. An atmosphere of openness and the concentration of high-end knowledge produced considerable interaction between researchers of different technical disciplines, knowledge sharing and mutual inspiration generated a definite boost for the innovative capacity of the organisation. To further accelerate this process, Philips decided in 2003 to open up the Campus to other technological companies, the result was a massive growth in the number of high-tech companies – both large and small. In March 2012 the Campus entered a new phase in its history, High Tech Campus Eindhoven was sold by Philips to Ramphastos Investments, a private consortium of investors led by Marcel Boekhoorn. Philips remains on the Campus as a tenant, but its status changed from owner/manager to resident, the campus attracts companies and research institutes engaging in advanced high-tech research and development. This includes research and development activity in the area of High Tech Systems, Nanotechnology, Embedded Systems, Smart Pharma, Life Sciences as well as Security and Encryption. Campus residents file - on average -4 patents a day, making the one of the benchmark centres for Dutch innovation. The High Tech Campus is located on the grounds of the former Philips Research Laboratories Eindhoven, when Philips sold the campus, opening it to other tenants, the facilities such as laboratories, cleanrooms, test facilities were opened up to other residents. The close proximity of high-tech specialists, researchers and businesses has helped to develop a productive ecosystem. Companies on campus include Philips Research, Philips Applied Technologies, Atos Origin, Aquaver, FluXXion, Cytocentrics, NXP and Dalsa. The campus is 1 km2 in size and includes 45,000 m2 of R&D facilities,185,000 m2 office space,6.000 m2 reserved for technology start-ups and 150,000 m2 of area open for development. The International Association of Science Parks ranks High Tech Campus in the top 17% of global science parks, the campus is surrounded by the Eindhoven high tech industry. Companies very near the campus include ASML, FEI Company and VDL Groep, the Eindhoven University of Technology is only a few kilometers away. The campus is located in one of the most innovative R&D-regions in the European Union, the campus is designed around a social hub known as The Strip
6.
Eindhoven
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Eindhoven is a municipality and a city in the south of the Netherlands, originally at the confluence of the Dommel and Gender streams. The Gender was dammed short of the city centre in the 1950s, the city has a population of 223,220 in January 2015, making it the fifth-largest municipality of the Netherlands and the largest in the province of North Brabant. Neighbouring cities and towns include Asten, Son en Breugel, Nuenen, Geldrop-Mierlo, Heeze-Leende, Waalre, Veldhoven, Eersel, Oirschot, the agglomeration has a population of 337,487. The metropolitan area consists of 419,045 inhabitants, the city region has a population of 753,426. Also, Eindhoven is located in the Brabantse Stedenrij, a metropolitan area with about 2 million inhabitants. The name Eindhoven derives from the contraction of the regional words eind, toponymically, eind occurs commonly as a prefix and postfix in local place- and streetnames. A hove comprised a parcel of land which a local lord might lease to private persons, given that a string of such parcels existed around Woensel, the name Eindhoven may have originated with the meaning last hoves on the land of Woensel. The written history of Eindhoven started in 1232, when Duke Hendrik I of Brabant granted city rights to Endehoven, then a small town right on the confluence of the Dommel, at the time of granting of its charter, Eindhoven had approximately 170 houses enclosed by a rampart. Just outside the city stood a small castle. The city was granted the right to organize a weekly market. Another factor in its establishment was its location on the route from Holland to Liège. Around 1388, the fortifications were strengthened further. And between 1413 and 1420, a new castle was built within the city walls, in 1486, Eindhoven was plundered and burned by troops from Guelders. The reconstruction of Eindhoven was finished in 1502, with a stronger rampart, however, in 1543 it fell again, its defense works having been neglected due to poverty. A big fire in 1554 destroyed 75% of the houses but by 1560 these had been rebuilt with the help of William I of Orange, Eindhoven did not become part of the Netherlands until 1629. During the French occupation, Eindhoven suffered again with many of its houses destroyed by the invading forces, Eindhoven remained a minor city after that until the start of the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution of the 19th century provided a major growth impulse, canals, roads and railroads were constructed. Industrialization brought population growth to Eindhoven, at the establishment of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815, Eindhoven had 2,310 inhabitants
7.
Netherlands
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The Netherlands, also informally known as Holland is the main constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a densely populated country located in Western Europe with three territories in the Caribbean. The European part of the Netherlands borders Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, sharing borders with Belgium, the United Kingdom. The three largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, Amsterdam is the countrys capital, while The Hague holds the Dutch seat of parliament and government. The port of Rotterdam is the worlds largest port outside East-Asia, the name Holland is used informally to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands. Netherlands literally means lower countries, influenced by its low land and flat geography, most of the areas below sea level are artificial. Since the late 16th century, large areas have been reclaimed from the sea and lakes, with a population density of 412 people per km2 –507 if water is excluded – the Netherlands is classified as a very densely populated country. Only Bangladesh, South Korea, and Taiwan have both a population and higher population density. Nevertheless, the Netherlands is the worlds second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products and this is partly due to the fertility of the soil and the mild climate. In 2001, it became the worlds first country to legalise same-sex marriage, the Netherlands is a founding member of the EU, Eurozone, G-10, NATO, OECD and WTO, as well as being a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union. The first four are situated in The Hague, as is the EUs criminal intelligence agency Europol and this has led to the city being dubbed the worlds legal capital. The country also ranks second highest in the worlds 2016 Press Freedom Index, the Netherlands has a market-based mixed economy, ranking 17th of 177 countries according to the Index of Economic Freedom. It had the thirteenth-highest per capita income in the world in 2013 according to the International Monetary Fund, in 2013, the United Nations World Happiness Report ranked the Netherlands as the seventh-happiest country in the world, reflecting its high quality of life. The Netherlands also ranks joint second highest in the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, the region called Low Countries and the country of the Netherlands have the same toponymy. Place names with Neder, Nieder, Nether and Nedre and Bas or Inferior are in use in all over Europe. They are sometimes used in a relation to a higher ground that consecutively is indicated as Upper, Boven, Oben. In the case of the Low Countries / the Netherlands the geographical location of the region has been more or less downstream. The geographical location of the region, however, changed over time tremendously
8.
Semiconductor
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Semiconductors are crystalline or amorphous solids with distinct electrical characteristics. They are of high electrical resistance — higher than typical resistance materials and their resistance decreases as their temperature increases, which is behavior opposite to that of a metal. The behavior of charge carriers which include electrons, ions and electron holes at these junctions is the basis of diodes, transistors and all modern electronics. Semiconductor devices can display a range of properties such as passing current more easily in one direction than the other, showing variable resistance. The modern understanding of the properties of a semiconductor relies on quantum physics to explain the movement of carriers in a crystal lattice. Doping greatly increases the number of carriers within the crystal. When a doped semiconductor contains mostly free holes it is called p-type, the semiconductor materials used in electronic devices are doped under precise conditions to control the concentration and regions of p- and n-type dopants. A single semiconductor crystal can have many p- and n-type regions, although some pure elements and many compounds display semiconductor properties, silicon, germanium, and compounds of gallium are the most widely used in electronic devices. Elements near the so-called metalloid staircase, where the metalloids are located on the table, are usually used as semiconductors. Some of the properties of materials were observed throughout the mid 19th. The first practical application of semiconductors in electronics was the 1904 development of the Cats-whisker detector, developments in quantum physics in turn allowed the development of the transistor in 1947 and the integrated circuit in 1958. There are several developed techniques that allow semiconducting materials to behave like conducting materials and these modifications have two outcomes, n-type and p-type. These refer to the excess or shortage of electrons, respectively, an unbalanced number of electrons would cause a current to flow through the material. Heterojunctions Heterojunctions occur when two differently doped semiconducting materials are joined together, for example, a configuration could consist of p-doped and n-doped germanium. This results in an exchange of electrons and holes between the differently doped semiconducting materials, the n-doped germanium would have an excess of electrons, and the p-doped germanium would have an excess of holes. The transfer occurs until equilibrium is reached by a process called recombination, a product of this process is charged ions, which result in an electric field. Excited Electrons A difference in electric potential on a material would cause it to leave thermal equilibrium. This introduces electrons and holes to the system, which interact via a process called ambipolar diffusion, whenever thermal equilibrium is disturbed in a semiconducting material, the amount of holes and electrons changes
9.
United States dollar
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The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States and its insular territories per the United States Constitution. It is divided into 100 smaller cent units, the circulating paper money consists of Federal Reserve Notes that are denominated in United States dollars. The U. S. dollar was originally commodity money of silver as enacted by the Coinage Act of 1792 which determined the dollar to be 371 4/16 grain pure or 416 grain standard silver, the currency most used in international transactions, it is the worlds primary reserve currency. Several countries use it as their currency, and in many others it is the de facto currency. Besides the United States, it is used as the sole currency in two British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean, the British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos Islands. A few countries use the Federal Reserve Notes for paper money, while the country mints its own coins, or also accepts U. S. coins that can be used as payment in U. S. dollars. After Nixon shock of 1971, USD became fiat currency, Article I, Section 8 of the U. S. Constitution provides that the Congress has the power To coin money, laws implementing this power are currently codified at 31 U. S. C. Section 5112 prescribes the forms in which the United States dollars should be issued and these coins are both designated in Section 5112 as legal tender in payment of debts. The Sacagawea dollar is one example of the copper alloy dollar, the pure silver dollar is known as the American Silver Eagle. Section 5112 also provides for the minting and issuance of other coins and these other coins are more fully described in Coins of the United States dollar. The Constitution provides that a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and that provision of the Constitution is made specific by Section 331 of Title 31 of the United States Code. The sums of money reported in the Statements are currently being expressed in U. S. dollars, the U. S. dollar may therefore be described as the unit of account of the United States. The word dollar is one of the words in the first paragraph of Section 9 of Article I of the Constitution, there, dollars is a reference to the Spanish milled dollar, a coin that had a monetary value of 8 Spanish units of currency, or reales. In 1792 the U. S. Congress passed a Coinage Act, Section 20 of the act provided, That the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars, or units. And that all accounts in the offices and all proceedings in the courts of the United States shall be kept and had in conformity to this regulation. In other words, this act designated the United States dollar as the unit of currency of the United States, unlike the Spanish milled dollar the U. S. dollar is based upon a decimal system of values. Both one-dollar coins and notes are produced today, although the form is significantly more common
10.
Earnings before interest and taxes
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In accounting and finance, earnings before interest and taxes, is a measure of a firms profit that includes all expenses except interest and income tax expenses. It is the difference between operating revenues and operating expenses, when a firm does not have non-operating income, then operating income is sometimes used as a synonym for EBIT and operating profit. To calculate EBIT, expenses are subtracted from revenues, net income is later obtained by subtracting interest and taxes from the result
11.
Net income
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In business, net income is an entitys income minus cost of goods sold, expenses and taxes for an accounting period. In the context of the presentation of financial statements, the IFRS Foundation defines net income as synonymous with profit, net income is a distinct accounting concept from profit but the same as net profit. Net income can also be calculated by adding a companys operating income to non-operating income, net income can be distributed among holders of common stock as a dividend or held by the firm as an addition to retained earnings. As profit and earnings are used synonymously for income, net earnings, often, the term income is substituted for net income, yet this is not preferred due to the possible ambiguity. Net income is called the bottom line because it is typically found on the last line of a companys income statement. The items deducted will typically include tax expense, financing expense, likewise, preferred stock dividends will be subtracted too, though they are not an expense. For a merchandising company, subtracted costs may be the cost of goods sold, sales discounts, for a product company advertising, manufacturing, and design and development costs are included
12.
Freescale Semiconductor
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The company employed 17,000 people worldwide. On December 7,2015, NXP Semiconductors completed its merger with Freescale for about $11.8 billion in cash, Freescale shareholders received $6.25 billion in cash and 0.3521 of an NXP share for each Freescale common share. Including the assumption of Freescales debt, the price is about $16.7 billion. In 1955, a Motorola transistor for car radios was the worlds first commercial high-power transistor and it was also Motorolas first mass-produced semiconductor device. In the 1960s, one of the U. S. space programs goals was to land a man on the moon, in 1968, NASA began manned Apollo flights that led to the first lunar landing in July 1969. The Apollo program was significant for hundreds of employees involved in designing, testing and producing its electronics. An up-data link in the Apollos command module received signals from Earth to relay to other on-board systems, a transponder received and transmitted voice and television signals and scientific data. Also that year, Motorolas technologies were used to introduce the first two-way mobile radio with a fully transistorized power supply, the companys first microprocessor was introduced in 1974, and was used in automotive, computing and video game applications. Freescales motion-sensing accelerometer powers the interactivity of the Guitar Hero video games, the number one provider of eReader processors worldwide was Freescale. In 2009, Freescale demonstrated the worlds lowest startup voltage single inductor DC/DC converter for use in solar, in addition, a recent ABI Research market study report states that Freescale owns 60% share of the radio frequency semiconductor device market. Also in 2011, Freescale announced the companys first magnetometer for location tracking in smart mobile devices, with the partnership of McLaren Electronic Systems, they helped the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series vehicles convert from carburetors to fuel injection starting in 2012. On March 8,2014, Freescale announced that 20 of its employees were passengers aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and that plane, carrying the Freescale employees, was lost, with only small part of it found over a year later. In March 2015, a agreement was announced through which Freescale Semiconductor would be acquired by NXP Semiconductors. The acquisition closed on December 7,2015, on February 26,2013, Freescale Semiconductor announced the creation of the worlds physically smallest ARM-powered chip. The Kinetis KL02 measures 1.9 by 2 millimeters and is a microcontroller unit, meaning the chip sports a processor, RAM, ROM, clock. The chip competes with the Atmel M0+ offerings, which are the leaders in the industry. One application that Freescale says the chips could be used for is swallowable computers, Freescale already works with a variety of health and wellness customers. Both the Fitbit and OmniPod insulin pump use Freescale chips, the new chip was on display at Embedded World in Nuernberg, Germany, from February 26–28,2013
13.
Philips
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Koninklijke Philips N. V. is a Dutch technology company headquartered in Amsterdam with primary divisions focused in the areas of electronics, healthcare and lighting. It was founded in Eindhoven in 1891, by Gerard Philips and it is one of the largest electronics companies in the world and employs around 105,000 people across more than 60 countries. Philips is organized into three divisions, Philips Consumer Lifestyle, Philips Healthcare and Philips Lighting. As of 2012, Philips was the largest manufacturer of lighting in the world measured by applicable revenues, Philips said it would seek damages for breach of contract in the US$200-million sale. In April 2016, the International Court of Arbitration ruled in favour of Philips, Philips has a primary listing on the Euronext Amsterdam stock exchange and is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index. It has a listing on the New York Stock Exchange. The Philips Company was founded in 1891, by Gerard Philips and this first factory has been adapted and is used as a museum. In 1895, after a difficult first few years and near bankruptcy, though he had earned a degree in engineering, Anton started work as a sales representative, soon, however, he began to contribute many important business ideas. After Gerard and Anton Philips changed their business by founding the Philips corporation. In the 1920s, the company started to other products. In 1939, they introduced their electric razor, the Philishave, the Chapel is a radio with built-in loudspeaker, which was designed during the early 1930s. On 11 March 1927, Philips went on the air with shortwave radio station PCJJ which was joined in 1929 by sister station PHOHI, PHOHI broadcast in Dutch to the Dutch East Indies while PCJJ broadcast in English, Spanish and German to the rest of the world. The international program on Sundays commenced in 1928, with host Eddie Startz hosting the Happy Station show, broadcasts from the Netherlands were interrupted by the German invasion in May 1940. The Germans commandeered the transmitters in Huizen to use for pro-Nazi broadcasts, some originating from Germany, Philips Radio was absorbed shortly after liberation when its two shortwave stations were nationalised in 1947 and renamed Radio Netherlands Worldwide, the Dutch International Service. Some PCJ programs, such as Happy Station, continued on the new station, by the late 1940s, the Type 10 was ready to be handed over to Philips subsidiary Johan de Witt in Dordrecht to be produced and incorporated into a generator set as originally planned. The result, rated at 180/200 W electrical output from a bore, approximately 150 of these sets were eventually produced. However, they filed a number of patents and amassed a wealth of information. The first Philips shaver was introduced in the 1930s, and was simply called “The Philishave”, in the USA, it was called the “Norelco”, which remains a part of their product line today
14.
Nijmegen
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Nijmegen, historically anglicized as Nimeguen, is a municipality and a city in the Dutch province of Gelderland. It is situated on the Waal river, close to the German border, Nijmegen is the oldest city in the Netherlands, the first to be recognized as such in Roman times, and in 2005 celebrated 2,000 years of existence. The municipality is part of the Stadsregio Arnhem-Nijmegen, an area with 736,107 inhabitants. By 69, when the Batavians, the inhabitants of the Rhine and Maas delta, revolted. This village was destroyed in the revolt, but when it had ended the Romans built another, bigger camp where the Legio X Gemina was stationed, soon after, another village formed around this camp. In 98, Nijmegen was the first of two settlements in what is now the Kingdom of the Netherlands to receive Roman city rights. In 103, the X Gemina was re-stationed to Vindobona, modern day Vienna, in 104 Emperor Trajan renamed the town, which now became known as Ulpia Noviomagus Batavorum, Noviomagus for short. Beginning in the half of the 4th century, Roman power decreased. It also appeared around this time on the Peutinger Map and it has been contended that in the 8th century Emperor Charlemagne maintained his palatium in Nijmegen on at least four occasions. During his brief deposition of 830, the emperor Louis the Pious was sent to Nijmegen by his son Lothar I, thanks to the Waal river, trade flourished. The powerful Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor was born at Nijmegen in 1165, in 1230 his son Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor granted Nijmegen city rights. In 1247, the city was ceded to the count of Guelders as collateral for a loan, the loan was never repaid, and Nijmegen has been a part of Gelderland ever since. This did not hamper trade, Nijmegen even became part of the Hanseatic League in 1364, the arts also flourished in this period. Famous medieval painters like the Limbourg brothers were born and educated in Nijmegen, during the Dutch Revolt, trade came to a halt and even though Nijmegen became a part of the Republic of United Provinces in 1585, it remained a border town and had to endure multiple sieges. In 1678 Nijmegen was host to the negotiations between the European powers that aimed to put an end to the constant warfare that had ravaged the continent for years, the result was the Treaty of Nijmegen that, unfortunately, failed to provide for a lasting peace. In the second half of the 19th century, the fortifications around the city became a major problem, there were too many inhabitants inside the walls, but the fortifications could not be demolished because Nijmegen was deemed as being of vital importance to the defence of the Netherlands. When events in the Franco-Prussian war proved that old-fashioned fortifications were no more of use, this policy was changed, the old castle had already been demolished in 1797, so that its bricks could be sold. Through the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, the Waal was bridged in 1878 by a rail bridge and in 1936 by a car bridge, which was claimed to be Europes biggest bridge at the time
15.
Private equity
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In finance, private equity is a type of equity and one of the asset classes consisting of equity securities and debt in operating companies that are not publicly traded on a stock exchange. A private equity investment will generally be made by an equity firm. Bloomberg Businessweek has called private equity a rebranding of leveraged-buyout firms after the 1980s, common investment strategies in private equity include, leveraged buyouts, venture capital, growth capital, distressed investments and mezzanine capital. In a typical leveraged-buyout transaction, a private-equity firm buys majority control of an existing or mature firm and this is distinct from a venture-capital or growth-capital investment, in which the investors invest in young, growing or emerging companies, and rarely obtain majority control. Private equity is often grouped into a broader category called private capital, generally used to describe capital supporting any long-term. The strategies private equity firms may use are as follows, leveraged buyout being the most important, the companies involved in these transactions are typically mature and generate operating cash flows. Leveraged buyouts involve a financial sponsor agreeing to an acquisition without itself committing all the capital required for the acquisition, to do this, the financial sponsor will raise acquisition debt which ultimately looks to the cash flows of the acquisition target to make interest and principal payments. Acquisition debt in an LBO is often non-recourse to the sponsor and has no claim on other investments managed by the financial sponsor. Historically the debt portion of a LBO will range from 60%–90% of the purchase price, between 2000–2005 debt averaged between 59. 4% and 67. 9% of total purchase price for LBOs in the United States. A private equity fund say for example, ABC Capital II, to this it adds $2bn of equity – money from its own partners and from limited partners. With this $11bn it buys all the shares of an underperforming company and it replaces the senior management in XYZ Industrial, and they set out to streamline it. The workforce is reduced, some assets are sold off, etc, the objective is to increase the value of the company for an early sale. The stock market is experiencing a market, and XYZ Industrial is sold two years after the buy-out for $13bn, yielding a profit of $2bn. The original loan can now be paid off with interest of say $0. 5bn, the remaining profit of $1. 5bn is shared among the partners. Taxation of such gains is at capital gains rates, notes, The lenders can insure against default by syndicating the loan to spread the risk, or by buying credit default swaps or selling collateralised debt obligations from/to other institutions. Often the loan/equity is not paid off after sale but left on the books of the company for it to pay off over time and this can be advantageous since the interest is typically offsettable against the profits of the company, thus reducing, or even eliminating, tax. Most buyout deals are much smaller, the average purchase in 2013 was $89m. The target company does not have to be floated on the stockmarket, buy-out operations can go wrong and in such cases the loss is increased by leverage, just as the profit is if all goes well
16.
Initial public offering
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Through this process, a privately held company transforms into a public company. Initial public offerings are used by companies to raise the expansion of capital, possibly to monetize the investments of early private investors. A company selling shares is never required to repay the capital to its public investors, after the IPO, when shares trade freely in the open market, money passes between public investors. The IPO process is known as going public. Details of the offering are disclosed to potential purchasers in the form of a lengthy document known as a prospectus. Most companies undertake an IPO with the assistance of an investment banking firm acting in the capacity of an underwriter, underwriters provide several services, including help with correctly assessing the value of shares and establishing a public market for shares. Alternative methods such as the dutch auction have also been explored, in terms of size and public participation, the two most notable examples of this method is the Google IPO and Snapchats parent company Snap Inc. China has recently emerged as a major IPO market, with several of the largest IPOs taking place in that country, the earliest form of a company which issued public shares was the case of the publicani during the Roman Republic. Like modern joint-stock companies, the publicani were legal bodies independent of their members whose ownership was divided into shares, there is evidence that these shares were sold to public investors and traded in a type of over-the-counter market in the Forum, near the Temple of Castor and Pollux. The shares fluctuated in value, encouraging the activity of speculators, mere evidence remains of the prices for which partes were sold, the nature of initial public offerings, or a description of stock market behavior. Publicanis lost favor with the fall of the Republic and the rise of the Empire, the first modern IPO occurred in March 1602 when the Dutch East India Company offered shares of the company to the public in order to raise capital. All the shares were tradable, and the shareholders received receipts for the purchase, a share certificate documenting payment and ownership such as we know today was not issued but ownership was instead entered in the companys share register. In the United States, the first IPO was the offering of Bank of North America around 1783. An IPO, therefore, allows a company to tap into a pool of potential investors to provide itself with capital for future growth, repayment of debt. A company selling shares is never required to repay the capital to its public investors. Those investors must endure the unpredictable nature of the market to price. After the IPO, when shares trade freely in the open market, for early private investors who choose to sell shares as part of the IPO process, the IPO represents an opportunity to monetize their investment. This type of offering is not dilutive, since no new shares are being created, once a company is listed, it is able to issue additional common shares in a number of different ways, one of which is the follow-on offering
17.
NASDAQ-100
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The NASDAQ-100 is a stock market index made up of 107 equity securities issued by 100 of the largest non-financial companies listed on the NASDAQ. It is a modified capitalization-weighted index, the stocks weights in the index are based on their market capitalizations, with certain rules capping the influence of the largest components. It is based on exchange, and it is not an index of U. S. -based companies and it does not have any financial companies, since these were put in a separate index. Both of those criteria differentiate it from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the NASDAQ-100 began on January 31,1985 by the NASDAQ, trying to promote itself in the shadow of the New York Stock Exchange. By creating these two indices, the NASDAQ hoped that options and futures contracts would be created on them, the first annual adjustments were made in 1993 in advance of options on the index that would trade at the Chicago Board Options Exchange in 1994. Foreign companies were first admitted to the index in January 1998 and those standards were relaxed in 2002, while standards for domestic firms were raised, ensuring that all companies met the same standards. After a gradual 5-year recovery to a high of 2,239. Panic focusing on the failure of the investment banking industry culminated in a loss of more than 10% on September 29,2008, subsequently plunging the index firmly into bear market territory. The NASDAQ-100, with much of the market, experienced a Limit Down open on October 24. At the close of 2015, the index closed at 4593.27, the NASDAQ-100 is often abbreviated as NDX in the derivatives markets. Its corresponding futures contracts are traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the regular futures are denoted by the Reuters Instrument Code ND, and the smaller E-mini version uses the code NQ. Both are among the most heavily traded futures at the exchange, the PowerShares QQQ exchange-traded fund, sponsored and overseen since March 21,2007 by Invesco through PowerShares, trades under the ticker NASDAQ, QQQ. It is commonly referred to by its ticker or nickname, the ques and it was formerly called NASDAQ-100 Trust Series 1. On December 1,2004, it was moved from the American Stock Exchange where it had the symbol QQQ to the NASDAQ and given the new four letter code QQQQ, on March 23,2011, Nasdaq changed its symbol back to QQQ. As of August 2012, the fund is the third most actively traded exchange-traded product in the world, on July 17,2007, the ETF closed above $50 for the first time since early 2001. Since then, it advanced to surpass its 2007 peak. By October 18,2013, it had passed and closed above $82 to reach its highest price levels since November 6–7,2000 and highest value since September 29,2000 when adjusted for splits and dividends. The NASDAQ has over the years put in place a series of stringent standards that companies must meet before being included in the index and those standards include the following, Being listed exclusively on NASDAQ in either the Global Select or Global Market tiers
18.
Internet of things
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In 2013 the Global Standards Initiative on Internet of Things defined the IoT as the infrastructure of the information society. Each thing is uniquely identifiable through its embedded computing system but is able to interoperate within the existing Internet infrastructure, experts estimate that the IoT will consist of almost 50 billion objects by 2020. Legal scholars suggest to look at Things as a mixture of hardware, software, data. These devices collect data with the help of various existing technologies. IoT is one of the platforms of todays Smart City, the term the Internet of Things was coined by Kevin Ashton of Procter & Gamble, later MITs Auto-ID Center, in 1999. This means that the fields of embedded systems, wireless sensor networks, control systems, automation. Mark Weisers seminal 1991 paper on ubiquitous computing, The Computer of the 21st Century, as well as venues such as UbiComp. In 1994 Reza Raji described the concept in IEEE Spectrum as small packets of data to a set of nodes. Between 1993 and 1996 several companies proposed solutions like Microsofts at Work or Novells NEST, however, only in 1999 did the field start gathering momentum. Bill Joy envisioned Device to Device communication as part of his Six Webs framework, the concept of the Internet of Things became popular in 1999, through the Auto-ID Center at MIT and related market-analysis publications. Radio-frequency identification was seen by Kevin Ashton as a prerequisite for the Internet of things at that point, Ashton prefers the phrase Internet for Things. If all objects and people in life were equipped with identifiers, computers could manage. Besides using RFID, the tagging of things may be achieved through such technologies as near field communication, barcodes, QR codes, for instance, instant and ceaseless inventory control would become ubiquitous. A persons ability to interact with objects could be altered based on immediate or present needs. According to Gartner, Inc. there will be nearly 20.8 billion devices on the Internet of things by 2020, ABI Research estimates that more than 30 billion devices will be wirelessly connected to the Internet of things by 2020. As such, it is clear that the IoT will consist of a large number of devices being connected to the Internet. In an active move to new and emerging technological innovation. The ability to network embedded devices with limited CPU, memory, on the other hand, IoT systems could also be responsible for performing actions, not just sensing things
19.
Automotive
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The automotive industry is a wide range of companies and organizations involved in the design, development, manufacturing, marketing, and selling of motor vehicles, some of them are called automakers. It is one of the worlds most important economic sectors by revenue, the term automotive was created from Greek autos, and Latin motivus to represent any form of self-powered vehicle. This term was proposed by Elmer Sperry, the automotive industry began in the 1890s with hundreds of manufacturers that pioneered the horseless carriage. For many decades, the United States led the world in automobile production. In 1929, before the Great Depression, the world had 32,028,500 automobiles in use, at that time the U. S. had one car per 4.87 persons. After World War II, the U. S. produced about 75 percent of auto production. In 1980, the U. S. was overtaken by Japan, in 2006, Japan narrowly passed the U. S. in production and held this rank until 2009, when China took the top spot with 13.8 million units. With 19.3 million units manufactured in 2012, China almost doubled the U. S. production, with 10.3 million units, from 1970 over 1998 to 2012, the number of automobile models in the U. S. has grown exponentially. Safety is a state that implies to be protected from any risk, danger, in the automotive industry, safety means that users, operators or manufacturers do not face any risk or danger coming from the motor vehicle or its spare parts. Safety for the automobiles themselves, implies there is no risk of damage. Safety in the industry is particularly important and therefore highly regulated. Automobiles and other vehicles have to comply with a certain number of norms and regulations, whether local or international. The standard ISO26262, is considered as one of the best practice framework for achieving automotive functional safety. In case of safety issues, danger, product defect or faulty procedure during the manufacturing of the motor vehicle and this procedure is called product recall. Product recalls happen in every industry and can be production-related or stem from the raw material, however, the automotive industry is still particularly concerned about product recalls, which cause considerable financial consequences. Around the world, there were about 806 million cars and light trucks on the road in 2007, consuming over 980 billion litres of gasoline, the automobile is a primary mode of transportation for many developed economies. The Detroit branch of Boston Consulting Group predicts that, by 2014, meanwhile, in the developed countries, the automotive industry has slowed down. It is also expected that this trend will continue, especially as the generations of people no longer want to own a car anymore
20.
Wireless network
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A wireless network is a computer network that uses wireless data connections between network nodes. Wireless telecommunications networks are generally implemented and administered using radio communication and this implementation takes place at the physical level of the OSI model network structure. Examples of wireless networks include cell phone networks, wireless local area networks, wireless networks, satellite communication networks. The first professional wireless network was developed under the brand ALOHAnet in 1969 at the University of Hawaii, the first commercial wireless network was the WaveLAN product family, developed by NCR in 1986. Terrestrial microwaves are in the low range, which limits all communications to line-of-sight. Relay stations are spaced approximately 48 km apart, Communications satellites – Satellites communicate via microwave radio waves, which are not deflected by the Earths atmosphere. The satellites are stationed in space, typically in geosynchronous orbit 35,400 km above the equator and these Earth-orbiting systems are capable of receiving and relaying voice, data, and TV signals. Cellular and PCS systems use several radio communications technologies, the systems divide the region covered into multiple geographic areas. Each area has a transmitter or radio relay antenna device to relay calls from one area to the next area. Radio and spread spectrum technologies – Wireless local area networks use a radio technology similar to digital cellular. Wireless LANs use spread spectrum technology to enable communication between devices in a limited area. IEEE802.11 defines a common flavor of open-standards wireless radio-wave technology known as Wifi, free-space optical communication uses visible or invisible light for communications. In most cases, line-of-sight propagation is used, which limits the physical positioning of communicating devices, Wireless personal area networks interconnect devices within a relatively small area, that is generally within a persons reach. For example, both Bluetooth radio and invisible infrared light provides a WPAN for interconnecting a headset to a laptop, Wi-Fi PANs are becoming commonplace as equipment designers start to integrate Wi-Fi into a variety of consumer electronic devices. Intel My WiFi and Windows 7 virtual Wi-Fi capabilities have made Wi-Fi PANs simpler and easier to set up, a wireless local area network links two or more devices over a short distance using a wireless distribution method, usually providing a connection through an access point for internet access. The use of spread-spectrum or OFDM technologies may allow users to move around within a coverage area. Products using the IEEE802.11 WLAN standards are marketed under the Wi-Fi brand name and it is often used in cities to connect networks in two or more buildings without installing a wired link. A wireless ad hoc network, also known as a mesh network or mobile ad hoc network, is a wireless network made up of radio nodes organized in a mesh topology
21.
Lighting
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Lighting or illumination is the deliberate use of light to achieve a practical or aesthetic effect. Lighting includes the use of artificial light sources like lamps and light fixtures, as well as natural illumination by capturing daylight. Daylighting is sometimes used as the source of light during daytime in buildings. This can save energy in place of using lighting, which represents a major component of energy consumption in buildings. Proper lighting can enhance performance, improve the appearance of an area. Indoor lighting is accomplished using light fixtures, and is a key part of interior design. Lighting can also be a component of landscape projects. With the discovery of fire, the earliest form of lighting used to illuminate an area were campfires or torches. As early as 400,000 BCE, fire was kindled in the caves of Peking Man, prehistoric people used primitive oil lamps to illuminate surroundings. These lamps were made from naturally occurring materials such as rocks, shells, horns and stones, were filled with grease, lamps typically used animal or vegetable fats as fuel. Hundreds of these lamps have been found in the Lascaux caves in modern-day France, oily animals were also used as lamps after being threaded with a wick. Fireflies have been used as lighting sources, candles and glass and pottery lamps were also invented. Chandeliers were a form of light fixture. A major reduction in the cost of lighting occurred with the discovery of whale oil, in 1849, Dr. Abraham Gesner, a Canadian geologist, devised a method where kerosene could be distilled from petroleum. Earlier coal-gas methods had been used for lighting since the 1820s, gesners kerosene was cheap, easy to produce, could be burned in existing lamps, and did not produce an offensive odor as did most whale oil. It could be stored indefinitely unlike whale oil, which would eventually spoil, the American petroleum boom began in the 1850s. By the end of the decade there were 30 kerosene plants operating in the United States, the cheaper, more efficient fuel began to drive whale oil out of the market. John D. Rockefeller was most responsible for the success of kerosene
22.
Near-field communication
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NFC devices are used in contactless payment systems, similar to those used in credit cards and electronic ticket smartcards and allow mobile payment to replace/supplement these systems. NFC is used for networking, for sharing contacts, photos, videos or files. NFC-enabled devices can act as electronic identity documents and keycards, NFC offers a low-speed connection with simple setup that can be used to bootstrap more capable wireless connections. Similar ideas in advertising and industrial applications were not generally successful commercially, outpaced by technologies such as barcodes, NFC protocols established a generally supported standard. When one of the devices has Internet connectivity, the other can exchange data with online services. NFC-enabled portable devices can be provided with software, for example to read electronic tags or make payments when connected to an NFC-compliant apparatus. NFC reader/writer—enables NFC-enabled devices to read information stored on inexpensive NFC tags embedded in labels or smart posters, NFC peer-to-peer—enables two NFC-enabled devices to communicate with each other to exchange information in an adhoc fashion. NFC tags are passive data stores which can be read, and under some circumstances written to and they typically contain data and are read-only in normal use, but may be rewritable. Applications include secure personal data storage, NFC tags can be custom-encoded by their manufacturers or use the industry specifications. The standards were provided by the NFC Forum, the forum was responsible for promoting the technology and setting standards and certifies device compliance. Secure communications are available by applying encryption algorithms as is done for credit cards, NFC standards cover communications protocols and data exchange formats and are based on existing radio-frequency identification standards including ISO/IEC14443 and FeliCa. The standards include ISO/IEC18092 and those defined by the NFC Forum, in addition to the NFC Forum, the GSMA group defined a platform for the deployment of GSMA NFC Standards within mobile handsets. GSMAs efforts include Trusted Services Manager, Single Wire Protocol, testing/certification, a patent licensing program for NFC is under deployment by France Brevets, a patent fund created in 2011. This program was under development by Via Licensing Corporation, an independent subsidiary of Dolby Laboratories, a platform-independent free and open source NFC library, libnfc, is available under the GNU Lesser General Public License. Present and anticipated applications include contactless transactions, data exchange and simplified setup of more complex such as Wi-Fi. This is used for identification, authentication and tracking,1983 The first patent to be associated with the abbreviation RFID was granted to Charles Walton. 1997 Early form patented and first used in Star Wars character toys for Hasbro, the patent was originally held by Andrew White and Marc Borrett at Innovision Research and Technology. The device allowed data communication between two units in close proximity,2002 Sony and Philips agreed to establish a technology specification and created a technical outline on March 25,2002
23.
Sony
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Sony Corporation is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation that is headquartered in Kōnan, Minato, Tokyo. Its diversified business includes consumer and professional electronics, gaming, entertainment, the company is one of the leading manufacturers of electronic products for the consumer and professional markets. Sony was ranked 116th on the 2015 list of Fortune Global 500 and these make Sony one of the most comprehensive entertainment companies in the world. The group consists of Sony Corporation, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Financial Holdings and others. Sony is among the Semiconductor sales leaders by year and as of 2013, the companys current slogan is BE MOVED. Their former slogans were make. believe, like. no. other, Sony has a weak tie to the SMFG keiretsu, the successor to the Mitsui keiretsu. Sony began in the wake of World War II, in 1946, Masaru Ibuka started an electronics shop in a department store building in Tokyo. The company had $530 in capital and a total of eight employees, in the following year he was joined by his colleague, Akio Morita, and they founded a company called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo 東京通信工業. The company built Japans first tape recorder, called the Type-G, in 1958 the company changed its name to Sony. When Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo was looking for a name to use to market themselves, they strongly considered using their initials. The primary reason they did not is that the railway company Tokyo Kyuko was known as TTK, the company occasionally used the acronym Totsuko in Japan, but during his visit to the United States, Morita discovered that Americans had trouble pronouncing that name. Another early name that was tried out for a while was Tokyo Teletech until Akio Morita discovered that there was an American company already using Teletech as a brand name, the name Sony was chosen for the brand as a mix of two words. One was the Latin word sonus, which is the root of sonic and sound, and the other was sonny, a common slang term used in 1950s America to call a boy. In the 1950s Japan sonny boys, was a word into Japanese which connoted smart and presentable young men. The first Sony-branded product, the TR-55 transistor radio, appeared in 1955, at the time of the change, it was extremely unusual for a Japanese company to use Roman letters to spell its name instead of writing it in kanji. The move was not without opposition, TTKs principal bank at the time and they pushed for a name such as Sony Electronic Industries, or Sony Teletech. Akio Morita was firm, however, as he did not want the company tied to any particular industry. Eventually, both Ibuka and Mitsui Banks chairman gave their approval, according to Schiffer, Sonys TR-63 radio cracked open the U. S. market and launched the new industry of consumer microelectronics
24.
Biometric passport
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It uses contactless smart card technology, including a microprocessor chip and antenna embedded in the front or back cover, or center page, of the passport. The currently standardized biometrics used for type of identification system are facial recognition, fingerprint recognition. These were adopted after assessment of different kinds of biometrics including retinal scan. The ICAO defines the biometric file formats and communication protocols to be used in passports, only the digital image of each biometric feature is actually stored in the chip. The comparison of biometric features is performed outside the chip by electronic border control systems. These standards intend interoperability between different countries and different manufacturers of passport books, some national identity cards are fully ICAO9303 compliant biometric travel documents. However others, such as the United States Passport Card, are not, Biometric passports are equipped with protection mechanisms to avoid and/or detect attacks, Non-traceable chip characteristics. Random chip identifiers reply to each request with a different chip number and this prevents tracing of passport chips. Using random identification numbers is optional, BAC protects the communication channel between the chip and the reader by encrypting transmitted information. Before data can be read from a chip, the needs to provide a key which is derived from the Machine Readable Zone, the date of birth, the date of expiry. If BAC is used, an attacker cannot eavesdrop transferred information without knowing the correct key, PA is aimed at identifying modification of passport chip data. The chip contains a file that stores hash values of all files stored in the chip, the digital signature is made using a document signing key which itself is signed by a country signing key. If a file in the chip is changed, this can be detected since the value is incorrect. Readers need access to all used public country keys to check whether the signature is generated by a trusted country. As of January 2017,55 of over 60 e-passport-issuing countries belong to the PKD program, AA prevents cloning of passport chips. The chip contains a key that cannot be read or copied. EAC adds functionality to check the authenticity of both the chip and the reader, furthermore, it uses stronger encryption than BAC. EAC is typically used to protect fingerprints and iris scans, in the European Union, using EAC is mandatory for all documents issued starting 28 June 2009
25.
Radio-frequency identification
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Radio-frequency identification uses electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. The tags contain electronically stored information, Passive tags collect energy from a nearby RFID readers interrogating radio waves. Active tags have a power source such as a battery. Unlike a barcode, the tag need not be within the line of sight of the reader, RFID is one method for Automatic Identification and Data Capture. These concerns resulted in standard specifications development addressing privacy and security issues, ISO/IEC18000 and ISO/IEC29167 use on-chip cryptography methods for untraceability, tag and reader authentication, and over-the-air privacy. ISO/IEC20248 specifies a digital data structure for RFID and barcodes providing data, source. This work is done within ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC31 Automatic identification, in 2014, the world RFID market is worth US$8.89 billion, up from US$7.77 billion in 2013 and US$6.96 billion in 2012. This includes tags, readers, and software/services for RFID cards, labels, fobs, the market value is expected to rise to US$18.68 billion by 2026. In 1945, Léon Theremin invented a tool for the Soviet Union which retransmitted incident radio waves with the audio information. Sound waves vibrated a diaphragm which slightly altered the shape of the resonator, similar technology, such as the IFF transponder, was routinely used by the allies and Germany in World War II to identify aircraft as friend or foe. Transponders are still used by most powered aircraft to this day, another early work exploring RFID is the landmark 1948 paper by Harry Stockman. Considerable research and development work has to be done before the basic problems in reflected-power communication are solved. Mario Cardullos device, patented on January 23,1973, was the first true ancestor of modern RFID, the basic Cardullo patent covers the use of RF, sound and light as transmission media. The original business plan presented to investors in 1969 showed uses in transportation, banking, security and medical. An early demonstration of reflected power RFID tags, both passive and semi-passive, was performed by Steven Depp, Alfred Koelle, and Robert Frayman at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1973, the portable system operated at 915 MHz and used 12-bit tags. This technique is used by the majority of todays UHFID and microwave RFID tags, the first patent to be associated with the abbreviation RFID was granted to Charles Walton in 1983. A radio-frequency identification system uses tags, or labels attached to the objects to be identified, two-way radio transmitter-receivers called interrogators or readers send a signal to the tag and read its response. RFID tags can be passive, active or battery-assisted passive
26.
Chipset
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In a computer system, a chipset is a set of electronic components in an integrated circuit that manages the data flow between the processor, memory and peripherals. It is usually found on the motherboard, chipsets are usually designed to work with a specific family of microprocessors. Because it controls communications between the processor and external devices, the plays a crucial role in determining system performance. In computing, the term commonly refers to a set of specialized chips on a computers motherboard or an expansion card. In personal computers, the first chipset for the IBM PC AT of 1984 was the NEAT chipset developed by Chips, in home computers, game consoles and arcade-game hardware of the 1980s and 1990s, the term chipset was used for the custom audio and graphics chips. Examples include the Commodore Amigas Original Chip Set or SEGAs System 16 chipset, the term chipset often refers to a specific pair of chips on the motherboard, the northbridge and the southbridge. The northbridge links the CPU to very high-speed devices, especially RAM and graphics controllers, in many modern chipsets, the southbridge contains some on-chip integrated peripherals, such as Ethernet, USB, and audio devices. Motherboards and their chipsets often come from different manufacturers, as of 2015, manufacturers of chipsets for x86 motherboards include AMD, Broadcom, Intel, NVIDIA, SiS and VIA Technologies. Apple computers and Unix workstations have traditionally used custom-designed chipsets, some server manufacturers also develop custom chipsets for their products. In the 1980s Chips and Technologies pioneered the manufacturing of chipsets for PC-compatible computers, computer systems produced since then often share commonly used chipsets, even across widely disparate computing specialties. For example, the NCR 53C9x, a low-cost chipset implementing a SCSI interface to devices, could be found in Unix machines such as the MIPS Magnum, embedded devices. Traditionally in x86 computers, the primary connection to the rest of the machine is through the motherboard chipsets northbridge. The northbridge is directly responsible for communications with high-speed devices and conversely any system communication back to the processor and this connection between the processor and northbridge is traditionally known as the front side bus. Requests to resources not directly controlled by the northbridge are offloaded to the southbridge, the southbridge traditionally handles everything else, generally lower-speed peripherals and board functions such as USB, parallel and serial communications. The connection between the northbridge and southbridge does not have a name, but is usually a high-speed interconnect proprietary to the chipset vendor. This made processor performance highly dependent on the chipset, especially the northbridges memory performance. In 2003, however, AMDs introduction of the Athlon 64-bit series of processors changed this, Intel followed suit in 2008 with the release of its Core i series CPUs and the X58 platform. In newer processors integration has increased, primarily through the inclusion of the systems primary PCIe controller
27.
Proximity card
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The proximity cards are part of the contactless card technologies. Held near a reader for a moment they enable the identification of an encoded number. The reader usually produces a beep or other sound to indicate the card has been read, Proximity cards typically have a read range up to 50 cm which is the main difference with contactless smartcard with 2 to 10 cm. The card can often be left in a wallet or purse, the term proximity card refers to the older 125 kHz devices as distinct to the newer 13.56 MHz contactless smartcards. Second generation prox cards works in UHF frequency are in use for mass, Proximity cards cant hold more data than a magnetic stripe card. Only contactless smartcards can hold other type of data like electronic funds balance for contactless payment systems, when used without encoding data, only with the Card Serial number, contactless smartcard have similar functionalities to Proximity cards. They are used as keycards for access doors in office buildings. Contactless smartcards are used for all applications, library cards, contactless payment systems. Active 125 kHz Prox cards, sometimes called vicinity cards, are powered by a lithium battery. They can have a range, up to 2 meters. The battery eventually runs down, however, and the card must be replaced after 2 to 7 years, the card and the reader unit communicate with each other through 125 kHz radio frequency fields by a process called resonant energy transfer. The reader has its own antenna, which transmits a short range radio frequency field. This energy is rectified to direct current which powers the integrated circuit, the chip sends its ID number or other data to the antenna coil, which transmits it by radio frequency signals back to the reader unit. The reader checks whether the ID number from the card is correct, since all the energy to power the card comes from the reader unit, passive cards must be close to the reader to function, and so have only a limited range. An active card contains a lithium cell in addition to the above components to power it. The integrated circuit contains a receiver uses the batterys power to amplify the signal from the reader unit so it is stronger. The battery also powers a transmitter circuit in the chip which transmits a stronger signal to cover the greater distance. This is also the case of the memory-based first generation of contactless smartcards and this means that there is no compatibility between the readers of a specific brand and the cards of another brand
28.
MIFARE
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MIFARE is the NXP Semiconductors-owned trademark of a series of chips widely used in contactless smart cards and proximity cards. The MIFARE name covers proprietary technologies based upon various levels of the ISO/IEC14443 Type A13.56 MHz contactless smart card standard, according to MIFARE themselves,10 billion of their smart card chips and 150 million of their reader modules have been sold. The technology is owned by NXP Semiconductors, which was spun off from Philips Electronics in 2006, the technology is embodied in both cards and readers. MIFARE Ultralight C The first low-cost ICs for limited-use applications that offer the benefits of an open Triple DES cryptography, the MIFARE Ultralight C can act as a single trip mass transit ticket, event ticket, or low cost loyalty card, and are also used for device authentication. MIFARE DESFire Are smart cards that comply to ISO/IEC 14443-4 Type A with a operating system from NXP. MIFARE DESFire EV1 Includes AES encryption, MIFARE DESFire EV1 delivers a balance of speed, performance and cost efficiency. MIFARE Plus Drop-in replacement for MIFARE Classic with certified security level and is backwards compatible with MIFARE Classic. MIFARE SAM AV2 Secure access module that provides the storage of cryptographic keys. The MIFARE Classic card is fundamentally just a memory storage device and they are ASIC-based and have limited computational power. Thanks to their reliability and low cost, those cards are used for electronic wallet, access control, corporate ID cards. The MIFARE Classic 1K offers 1024 bytes of storage, split into 16 sectors. Each key can be programmed to allow operations such as reading, writing, increasing value blocks, MIFARE Classic 4K offers 4096 bytes split into forty sectors, of which 32 are same size as in the 1K with eight more that are quadruple size sectors. MIFARE Classic mini offers 320 bytes split into five sectors, for each of these card types,16 bytes per sector are reserved for the keys and access conditions and can not normally be used for user data. Also, the very first 16 bytes contain the number of the card. That brings the net capacity of these cards down to 752 bytes for MIFARE Classic 1K,3440 bytes for MIFARE Classic 4K. It uses an NXP proprietary security protocol for authentication and ciphering, the Samsung TecTile NFC tag stickers use MIFARE Classic chips. This means only devices with an NXP NFC controller chip can read or write these tags, at the moment BlackBerry phones, the Nokia Lumia 610, the Google Nexus 4, Google Nexus 7 LTE and Nexus 10 cant read/write TecTile stickers. MIFARE Classic encryption has been compromised, see below for details, the MIFARE Ultralight has only 512 bits of memory, without cryptographic security
29.
Automobile immobilization
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An immobiliser or immobilizer is an electronic security device fitted to an automobile that prevents the engine from running unless the correct key is present. This prevents the car from being hot wired after entry has been achieved, Research shows that the uniform application of immobilisers reduced the rate of car theft by 40%. The electric immobilizer/alarm system was invented by St. George Evans and Edward Birkenbuel, the system settings could be changed each time the car was driven. Modern immobiliser systems are automatic, meaning the owner does not have to remember to activate it, early models used a static code in the ignition key which was recognised by an RFID loop around the lock barrel and checked against the vehicles engine control unit for a match. If the code is unrecognised, the ECU will not allow fuel to flow, later models use rolling codes or advanced cryptography to defeat copying of the code from the key or ECU. When the ECU determines that the key is both current and valid, the ECU activates the fuel-injection sequence. This information can be used during investigations, warranty claims or technical troubleshooting. Add-on immobilisers are available for cars or vehicles that do not come equipped with factory immobilisers. The insurance approval for a self-arming immobiliser is known as Thatcham 2 after the Motor Insurance Repair Research Centre in Thatcham, approved immobilisers must intercept at least two circuits, typically the low-voltage ignition circuit and the fuel pump circuit. Some may also intercept the low-current starter motor circuit from the key switch to the relay, statistics in Australia show that three out of four vehicle thefts are older cars stolen for joyriding, transport, or to commit another crime. Immobilisers are fitted to around 45% of all cars in Australia, in many instances where a vehicle fitted with an immobiliser has been stolen, the thief had access to the original key. Only around one in four stolen vehicles are stolen by professional thieves, the majority of vehicles are stolen by opportunistic thieves relying on finding older vehicles that have ineffective security or none at all. Honda was the first motorcycle manufacturer to include immobilisers on its products in the 1990s, in September 2007, a Transport Canada regulation mandated the installation of engine immobilisers in all new lightweight vehicles and trucks manufactured in Canada. Numerous vulnerabilities were found in the designed to protect modern cars from theft. Many vehicle immobilisers use the Megamos-chip which is proven to be crackable, megamos transponder is one of many different transponders found in todays immobilizer systems and also comes in many different iterations. Hacking of an immobiliser in the world would happen on the vehicle not on the key. It would be faster to program a new key to the vehicle than to try and clone the existing key, a 2016 study in the Economic Journal finds that the immobilizer lowered the overall rate of car theft by about 40% between 1995 and 2008. The benefits in terms of prevented thefts are at least three times higher than the costs of installing the device
30.
Signetics
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Signetics was an American electronics pioneer, it was the first electronics manufacturer specifically established to make integrated circuits. Founded in 1961, they went on to develop a number of microprocessors and support chips. They were bought by Philips in 1975 and incorporated in Philips Semiconductors, Signetics was started in 1961, by a group of engineers—David Allison, David James, Lionel Kattner, and Mark Weissenstern—who left Fairchild Semiconductor. At the time, Fairchild was concentrating on its component business, Signetics founders believed that ICs were the future of electronics and wished to commercialize them. The name came from Signal Network Electronics, the venture was financed by a group organized through Lehman Brothers, who invested $1M. The initial idea was to design and manufacture ICs for specific customers, in order to facilitate this goal, Signetics did not have a separate R&D lab, instead, the engineering was all done in technical development department, and was closely tied to marketing. Signetics first developed a series of standard DTL ICs, which it announced in 1962, however, it was struggling to sell custom-made circuits, which was the original goal, and was quickly exhausting the initial investment money, and new investors had to be found. In November 1962, Corning Glass invested another $1. 7M in Signetics and this money enabled Signetics to survive, and much of it was put into a marketing and sales campaign. In 1963, the Department of Defense made a decision to begin a shift towards microelectronics and ICs, due to their size, higher reliability. As a result, military contractors began to explore the field, in the fall of 1963 and throughout most of 1964, sales grew quickly, and the company finally became profitable. Signetics also grew rapidly, hiring more engineers and increasing its manufacturing space, in 1964, Signetics opened a large new manufacturing plant in Sunnyvale, California. At this time it was by far the largest manufacturer of ICs in Silicon Valley and it later expanded also to factories in Orem, Utah and Albuquerque, New Mexico where there were two fabs, FAB22 and FAB23. In 1964, Fairchild began to push its way into the IC business, signeticss circuits being the standard in the market, Fairchild decided to copy them. However, it used its cash position, marketing power. Signetics was struggling to compete, and began losing money again, Corning saw this as proof of poor management, and used its controlling interest to drive out most of the founders and take complete control of the company. Signetics managed to stabilize and become profitable again, but it never regained its market leadership and it continued to innovate in the IC technology, and remained a significant force. Around 1971, the Signetics Corporation introduced the 555 timer IC and it was called The IC Time Machine. It was also the first and only commercial IC timer available at the time, in 1975 it was acquired by Philips, who continued the brand for some years
31.
Silicon Valley
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Silicon Valley is a nickname for the southern portion of the San Francisco Bay Area, in the northern part of the U. S. state of California. The valley in its name refers to the Santa Clara Valley in Santa Clara County, which includes the city of San Jose and surrounding cities and towns, where the region has been traditionally centered. The region has expanded to include the half of the San Francisco Peninsula in San Mateo County. It was in the Valley that the integrated circuit, the microprocessor. As of 2013, the region employed about a quarter of an information technology workers. The term is now used as a synecdoche for the American high-technology economic sector. The first published use of Silicon Valley is credited to Don Hoefler, hostler used the phrase as the title of a series of articles in the weekly trade newspaper Electronic News. The series, entitled Silicon Valley in the USA, began in the papers January 11,1971, the term gained widespread use in the early 1980s, at the time of the introduction of the IBM PC and numerous related hardware and software products to the consumer market. The silicon part of the name refers to the concentration of companies involved in the making of semiconductors. These firms slowly replaced the orchards and the fruits which gave the area its initial nickname — the Valley of Hearts Delight, Stanford University leadership was especially important in the valleys early development. Together these elements formed the basis of its growth and success, the ship had been outfitted with a wireless telegraph transmitter by a local newspaper, so that they could prepare a celebration on the return of the American sailors. Local historian Clyde Arbuckle states in Clyde Arbuckles History of San Jose that California first heard the click of a key on September 11,1853. It marked completion of an enterprise begun by a couple of San Francisco Merchants Exchange members named George Sweeney and it was known as the Inner Station, the second, as the Outer Station. Both used their primitive mode of communication until Messrs, Sweeney and Baugh connected the Outer Station directly with the Merchantss Exchange by electric telegraph Wire. According to Arbuckle Sweeney and Baughs line was strictly an intra-city, San Francisco-based service, allen and C. Burnham led the way to build a line from San Francisco to Marysville via San Jose, Stockton, and Sacramento. Delays to construction occurred until September 1853, but, …San Jose became the first station on the line when the wire arrived here on October 15, the line was completed when Gambles northbound crew met a similar crew working southward from Marysville on October 24. The Bay Area had long been a site of United States Navy research. In 1909, Charles Herrold started the first radio station in the United States with regularly scheduled programming in San Jose
32.
555 timer IC
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The 555 timer IC is an integrated circuit used in a variety of timer, pulse generation, and oscillator applications. The 555 can be used to time delays, as an oscillator. Derivatives provide two or four timing circuits in one package, introduced in 1972 by Signetics, the 555 is still in widespread use due to its low price, ease of use, and stability. It is now made by companies in the original bipolar. As of 2003, it was estimated that 1 billion units were manufactured every year, the 555 is the most popular integrated circuit ever manufactured. The IC was designed in 1971 by Hans R. Camenzind under contract to Signetics, in 1962, Camenzind joined PR Mallorys Laboratory for Physical Science in Burlington, Massachusetts. He designed a pulse-width modulation amplifier for audio applications, but it was not successful in the market there was no power transistor included. He became interested in such as a gyrator and a phase-locked loop. He was hired by Signetics to develop a PLL IC in 1968 and he designed an oscillator for PLLs such that the frequency did not depend on the power supply voltage or temperature. However, Signetics laid off half of its employees, and the development was due to a recession. Camenzind proposed the development of a circuit based on the oscillator for PLLs. Other engineers argued the product could be built from existing parts, among 5xx numbers that were assigned for analogue ICs, the special number 555 was chosen. Camenzind also taught design at his nearby university in the morning. The first design was reviewed in the summer of 1971, there was no problem, so it had gone to the layout design. A few days later, he got the idea of using a direct resistance instead of a constant current source, the change decreased the required 9 pins to 8, so the IC could be fit in an 8-pin package instead of a 14-pin package. This design passed the design review, and the prototype was completed in October 1971. Its 9-pin copy had been released by another company founded by an engineer who attended the first review and retired from Signetics. The 555 timer was manufactured by 12 companies in 1972 and it became the best selling product, depending on the manufacturer, the standard 555 package includes 25 transistors,2 diodes and 15 resistors on a silicon chip installed in an 8-pin mini dual-in-line package
33.
VLSI Technology
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VLSI Technology, Inc. was a company which designed and manufactured custom and semi-custom ICs. The company was based in Silicon Valley, with headquarters at 1109 McKay Drive in San Jose, California, VLSI was acquired in June 1999, for about $1 billion by Philips Electronics and is today a part of the Philips spin-off NXP Semiconductors. The company was founded in 1979, by a trio from Fairchild Semiconductor by way of Synertek – Jack Balletto, Dan Floyd, alfred J. Stein became the CEO of the company in 1982. Subsequently VLSI built its first fab in San Jose, eventually a second fab was built in San Antonio, VLSI had its initial public offering in 1983, and was listed on the stock market as. The company was acquired by Philips and survives to this day as part of NXP Semiconductors. The original business plan was to be a wafer fabrication company. Thanks to its Caltech and UC Berkeley students, VLSI was an important pioneer in the design automation industry. It offered a package of tools, originally based on the lambda-based design style advocated by Carver Mead. VLSI became an early vendor of standard cell to the merchant market in the early 1980s where the other ASIC-focused company, prior to VLSIs cell-based offering, the technology had been primarily available only within large vertically integrated companies with semiconductor units such as AT&T and IBM. VLSIs design tools included not only entry and simulation but eventually also cell-based routing, a datapath compiler, SRAM and ROM compilers. The tools were a design solution for IC design and not just point tools. Characterization tools were integrated to generate FrameMaker Data Sheets for Libraries, VLSI eventually spun off the CAD and Library operation into Compass Design Automation but it never reached IPO before it was purchased by Avanti Corp. VLSIs physical design tools were not only to its ASIC business. The companies development of automated layout tools was a rational make because theres nothing to buy decision, the EDA industry finally caught up in the late 1980s when Tangent Systems released its TanCell and TanGate products. In 1989, Tangent was acquired by Cadence Design Systems, unfortunately, for all VLSIs initial competence in design tools, they were not leaders in semiconductor manufacturing technology. VLSI had not been timely in developing a 1.0 µm manufacturing process as the rest of the moved to that geometry in the late 1980s. VLSI entered a long-term technology parthership with Hitachi and finally released a 1.0 µm process, as VLSI struggled to gain parity with the rest of the industry in semiconductor technology, the design flow was moving rapidly to a Verilog HDL and synthesis flow. Cadence acquired Gateway, the leader in Verilog hardware design language, as VLSIs tools were being eclipsed, VLSI waited too long to open the tools up to other fabs and Compass Design Automation was never a viable competitor to industry leaders
34.
Juristic person
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To have legal personality means to be capable of holding legal rights and obligations within a certain legal system, such as entering into contracts, suing, and being sued. Legal personality is a prerequisite to legal capacity, the ability of any person to amend rights. In international law, consequently, legal personality is a prerequisite for an organization to be able to sign international treaties in its own name. A holder of legal personality is called as a person, Persons are of two kinds, natural persons and juridical persons – entities such as corporations, which are treated in law as if they are persons. While human beings acquire legal personhood when they are born, juridical persons do so when they are incorporated in accordance with law, artificial personality, juridical personality, or juristic personality is the characteristic of a non-living entity regarded by law to have the status of personhood. A juridical or artificial person has a name and has certain rights, protections, privileges, responsibilities. The concept of a person is a fundamental legal fiction. It is pertinent to the philosophy of law, as it is essential to laws affecting a corporation, juridical personality allows one or more natural persons to act as a single entity for legal purposes. In many jurisdictions, artificial personality allows that entity to be considered under law separately from its individual members and they may sue and be sued, enter contracts, incur debt, and own property. Entities with legal personality may also be subjected to legal obligations. An entity with legal personality may shield its members from personal liability, in some common law jurisdictions a distinction is drawn between corporation aggregate and a corporation sole. Historically most corporations sole were ecclesiastical in nature, but a number of public offices are now formed as corporations sole. The concept of personality is not absolute. The concept of a person is now central to Western law in both common-law and civil-law countries, but it is also found in virtually every legal system. Examples are a religious officiant in that capacity, or The Crown in the Commonwealth realms, a corporation aggregate is a corporation constituted by more than one member. Municipal corporations are creatures of statute, other organizations may be created by statute as legal persons, including European economic interest groupings. Unincorporated associations, that is aggregates of two or more persons, are treated as persons in some jurisdictions but not others. Partnerships, an aggregate of two or more persons to carry on a business in common for profit and created by agreement, traditionally, partnerships did not have continuing legal personality, but many jurisdictions now treat them as having an independent legal personality
35.
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts
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KKR & Co. L. P. is an American multinational private equity firm, specializing in leveraged buyouts, headquartered in New York City. The firm sponsors and manages private equity investment funds, a pioneer in the leveraged buyout industry, the firm has completed over $400 billion of private equity transactions since its inception. KKR has completed investments in over 160 companies since 1977, completing at least one investment in every year except in 1982, KKR has 13 additional offices in the United States, Europe and Asia. The firm is located in the Solow Building, but recently announced its intentions to occupy a newly constructed 30 Hudson Yards. In October 2009, KKR listed shares in the company through KKR & Co. an affiliate that holds 30% of the ownership equity. In March 2010, KKR filed to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange, with trading commencing four months later, on July 15,2010. KKR is operated by its managing partners Henry Kravis and George R. Roberts, KKR invests primarily through leveraged buyouts as well as growth capital investments. It has traditionally specialized in equity investments, focusing on specific industry sectors where the firm has created nine dedicated investment groups. The firm has traditionally had strong ties with its investors, KKR has historically relied primarily on private equity funds, pools of committed capital that are raised from a broad array of institutional investors. KFN was a casualty of the subprime mortgage crisis and in September 2007, Henry Kravis. On February 20,2008, KFN was once forced to delay the repayment of billions of dollars of commercial paper. Following the transaction, KFN converted from a REIT to a LLC, KKR Private Equity Investors is a publicly traded private equity fund that invests as a fund of funds in KKR private equity funds. KPE also co-invests in transactions alongside KKRs private equity funds, in May 2006, KKR raised $5 billion in an initial public offering for a KPE to serve as a new permanent investment vehicle listing it on the Euronext exchange in Amsterdam. KKR raised three more than it expected, as many of the investors in KPE were hedge funds seeking exposure to private equity. As private equity had been booming in preceding years, investing in a KKR fund was attractive to investors, however, KPEs first-day performance was lackluster, trading down 1. 7% and trading volume was limited. Initially, a handful of private equity firms and hedge funds had planned to follow KKRs lead. KPEs stock declined from an IPO price of €25 per share to €18.16 at the end of 2007 and they targeted family-owned businesses, many of which had been founded in the years following World War II which by the 1960s and 1970s were facing succession issues. Their acquisition of Orkin Exterminating Company in 1964 is among the first significant leveraged buyout transactions, despite a number of highly successful investments, the $27 million investment in Cobblers ended in bankruptcy
36.
Bain Capital
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Bain Capital is a global alternative investment firm based in Boston, Massachusetts. It specializes in equity, venture capital and credit products. Bain Capital invests across a range of sectors and geographic regions. As of June 2014, the firm managed more than $75 billion of capital across its various investment platforms. The firm was founded in 1984 by partners from the consulting firm Bain & Company, as of 2014, Bain Capital employs more than 900 people. In addition to the three founding partners, the team included Fraser Bullock, Robert F. White, Joshua Bekenstein, Adam Kirsch. Romney initially had the titles of president and managing partner or managing partner. He later became referred to as managing director or CEO as well and he was also the sole shareholder of the firm. At the beginning, the firm had fewer than ten employees, in the face of skepticism from potential investors, Romney and his partners spent a year raising the $37 million in funds needed to start the new operation. Bain partners put in $12 million of their own money and sourced the rest from wealthy individuals, early investors included Boston real estate mogul Mortimer Zuckerman and Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots football team. They also included members of elite Salvadoran families who fled the civil war. They and other wealthy Latin Americans invested $9 million primarily through offshore companies registered in Panama, while Bain Capital was founded by Bain executives, the firm was not an affiliate or a division of Bain & Company but rather a completely separate company. Initially, the two shared the same offices—in an office tower at Copley Place in Boston—and a similar approach to improving business operations. Bain Capital also provided an investment opportunity for partners of Bain & Company, the firm initially gave a cut of its profits to Bain & Company, but Romney later persuaded Bill Bain to give that up. The Bain Capital team was initially reluctant to invest its capital, by 1985, things were going poorly enough that Romney considered closing the operation, returning investors money back to them, and having the partners go back to their old positions. The partners saw weak spots in so many potential deals that by 1986, at first, Bain Capital focused on venture capital opportunities. One of Bains earliest and most notable venture investments was in Staples, in 1986, Bain provided $4.5 million to two supermarket executives, Leo Kahn and Thomas G. Stemberg, to open an office supply supermarket in Brighton, Massachusetts. Bain Capital eventually reaped a nearly sevenfold return on its investment, another very successful investment occurred in 1986 when $1 million was invested in medical equipment maker Calumet Coach, which eventually returned $34 million
37.
Silver Lake Partners
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Silver Lake is an American private equity firm focused on leveraged buyout and growth capital investments in technology, technology-enabled and related industries. Founded in 1999, the firm is one of the largest technology investors in the world. Notable among its investment holdings are Broadcom, Dell, Alibaba, Go Daddy, William Morris Endeavor, IMG Worldwide, Avaya, Sabre Holdings, Skype, Symantec, GLG, Seagate Technology and NASDAQ. Silver Lake is headquartered in Menlo Park with offices in San Mateo, Cupertino, New York, London, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Silver Lake operates through four primary businesses, all focused on technology investments, Silver Lake Partners makes private equity investments in large cap technology companies. Silver Lake Partners was the original business founded by Jim Davidson, Dave Roux, Roger McNamee and Glenn Hutchins. Silver Lake Sumeru – focuses on investments in middle-market companies. The Sumeru business was known as Shah Capital founded by Ajay Shah. Silver Lake Kraftwerk a growth oriented fund focused on energy, energy technology, Silver Lake Waterman a growth capital, via a proprietary Growth Debt product, to later-stage growth companies in the technology and technology-enabled industries. The firm raised its first fund, Silver Lake Partners, with $2.3 billion of investor commitments, Silver Lakes first fund was among the best performing funds of its vintage. The firms second fund, Silver Lake Partners II was raised in 2004 with $3.6 billion of commitments, the firms third fund, Silver Lake Partners III was raised in 2007 with $9.6 billion of commitments. Also in 2007, the firm launched its investment business, Silver Lake Sumeru, hiring Ajay Shah. Sumeru completed fundraising for its debut fund in 2008 with $1.1 billion of capital, Silver Lake also launched its credit focused business, Silver Lake Financial in 2007. Silver Lake Financial is headed by Roger Wittlin, who joined the firm together with a group of staff from Sutter Credit Strategies, in 2013, the firm raised its fourth fund, Silver Lake Partners IV, which closed in 2013 with $10.3 billion in committed capital. In 2004, McNamee left Silver Lake to found Elevation Partners, on December 20,2007 Cisco Systems development chief, Charles Giancarlo, announced his departure from Cisco and his new position as partner and managing director at Silver Lake. Since inception in 1999, Silver Lake has made investments through leveraged buyout transactions, minority growth investments, multiPlan, NASDAQ, NetScout Systems, NXP Semiconductors, Sabre Holdings, Seagate Technology, Serena Software, SunGard, Talend, TD Ameritrade, Technicolor SA, UGS Corp. After the sale of Skype to Microsoft in 2011, Silver Lake was accused of depriving a employee of an options windfall. At issue was a clause in the Skype employee stock option grant agreement, the repurchase right gave Skype the authority to buy back shares at the grant price, when an employee left the company, even when those shares were vested
38.
Apax Partners
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Apax Partners LLP is a British private equity and venture capital firm, headquartered in London, England. The company also operates out of eight offices in New York, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Tel Aviv, Madrid, Stockholm, Milan. The firm, including its various predecessors, have raised approximately $35 billion dating back to 1969, Apax Partners is one of the oldest and largest private equity firms operating on an international basis, ranked the seventh largest private equity firm globally. Apax invests exclusively in business sectors including, telecommunications, information technology, retail and consumer products, media, healthcare and financial. As of the end of 2007, Apax had invested in approximately 340 companies in all stages of development, Apax raises capital for its investment funds through institutional investors including corporate and public pension funds, university and college endowments, foundations and fund of funds. One of the firms co-founders, Alan Patricof, was an investor in Apple Computer. Apax Partners Worldwide is the product of the combination of three firms, Patricof & Co, Saunders III and Allan W. Karp and joined by John Megrue in 1992. In 1969, Alan Patricof founded Patricof & Co. a firm dedicated to making investments in development capital later known as venture capital, in 1975, Patricof launched 53rd Street Ventures, a $10 million vehicle. Meanwhile, in 1972, Sir Ronald Cohen and Maurice Tchénio, MMG initially was established as an advisory firm, working with small emerging companies, rather than an investment firm. However, MMG initially struggled to gain traction amid the economic conditions. By 1977, two of the four founding partners had left MMG, leaving Cohen and Tchénio in need of a partner to help rejuvenate their firm. In that year, Cohen approached Alan Patricof to join them, the new firm would be known as Alan Patricof Associates and ultimately come to be known as Apax Partners. Following the merger, MMG abandoned its advising business, and the new APA shifted its focus exclusively to investing in start-up companies, throughout the 1980s, the firm grew steadily raising capital under a series of separate funds. This trend was prevalent in Europe than the U. S. where Patricof preferred to continue focusing on venture investments. In 1991, Apax Partners became the name for all of its European operations however the U. S. business still operated under the Patricof & Co. name. By the mid-1990s Apax had become one of the private equity firms globally. In 2000, Patricof & Co. adopted the Apax Partners branding, the U. S. business would operate as Apax Partners, Inc. In 2006, Patricof left Apax to form Greycroft Partners which focuses on small early-stage venture capital investments, despite the closer relations between the U. S. and European teams, the firm still operated separate fund entities for each geography
39.
AlpInvest Partners
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AlpInvest Partners is a private equity asset manager with $48 billion of assets under management as of June 30,2013. AlpInvest operates three investment teams focused on equity, Fund Investments, Secondary investments and Co-Investments. In 2011, the firm was acquired by a joint venture between AlpInvest management and The Carlyle Group and since August 2013, AlpInvest has operated as a subsidiary of Carlyle. Founded in 1999, AlpInvest has offices in New York, Amsterdam, Hong Kong and Indianapolis with over 75 investment professionals, with over $48 billion of funds under management, AlpInvest is one of the largest investors in the private equity asset class globally. AlpInvest will invest with these firms either by making commitments to new investment funds or by purchasing funds through the private equity secondary market, AlpInvest is one of the largest private equity fund investors and is also among the largest and most active and experienced investors in private equity secondaries. AlpInvests primary beneficiaries are the 4.8 million participants in the pension funds Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP and Stichting Pensioenfonds Zorg en Welzijn, ABP and PFZW collectively had assets of over $500 billion as of December 31,2012 and are among the largest pension funds in the world. Prior to 2011, AlpInvest had not historically solicited capital from investors or institutions. Following its spinout from the Dutch pension funds, AlpInvest has been actively raising capital from investors in North America, Europe, Asia. Among AlpInvests most notable U. S. clients are Municipal Employees Retirement System of Michigan, as the firm evolved, AlpInvest shifted its focus toward an expansion of its investment management business. In 2000, AlpInvest expanded its investment platform, by creating a dedicated equity co-investment team to invest in transactions alongside its core private equity managers, the following year, in 2001, the firm began a formal effort to make mezzanine investments. A year later, in 2002, AlpInvest launched a secondary investment platform, the following is a timeline of significant milestones, 1980s - Both ABP and PGGM begin separate in-house private equity investment programs, investing primarily in private equity funds. 1990s - Alpinvest Holding N. V. an evergreen investment fund, is founded, Alpinvest Holding N. V. provided private equity and mezzanine capital to middle market companies in Benelux and Germany until its acquisition by ABP and PGGM in 2000. 1997 - Alpinvest Holding N. V. begins trading on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange on 11 June 1997, major shareholders in Alpinvest Holding N. V. included the Dutch government and ABN Amro Bank NV. 1999 - ABP and PGGM form NIB Capital Private Equity, the predecessor of AlpInvest under the leadership of Volkert Doeksen, NIB Capital is formed from several separate teams from NIB Bank NV and Parnib Holding NV. 2000 - Alpinvest Holding N. V. is acquired by ABP and PGGM, ABP and PGGM topped a bid from GIMV to acquire the listed investment fund. NIB Capital receives its first mandate of €13 billion from ABP, the remainder comprised existing investments made by ABP, PGGM and NIB Capital’s predecessors. 2000 - AlpInvest begins a dedicated equity co-investment group,2001 - NIB Capital opens New York office. 2002 - NIB Capital begins a dedicated secondary investment effort with a €1 billion mandate,2004 - NIB Capital Private Equity spun out to ABP and PGGM and renamed AlpInvest Partners
40.
Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin
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The IFA or Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin is one of the oldest industrial exhibitions in Germany. Between 1924 and 1939 it was an event, but as from 1950 it was organized on a two yearly basis until 2005. Since then it has become an event again, held in September. Today it is one of leading trade shows for consumer electronics. It offers the opportunity to exhibitors to present their latest products and developments to the general public, as a result of daily reporting in almost all the German media, the radio exhibition achieves a large spreading of the information – and advertising messages and has also become international. In the course of its history, a number of world innovations were first seen at the exhibition. As of 2015 IFA is “Europe’s biggest tech show”,245,000 visitors and 1,645 exhibitors attended IFA2015. German physicist and inventor Manfred von Ardenne gave a demonstration of a television system using a cathode ray tube for both transmission and reception, at the 1931 show. In 1933 The Volksempfänger, a Nazi-sponsored radio receiver design, was introduced, ordered by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, designed by Otto Griessing, sold by Gustav Seibt, it was presented at the tenth Berliner Funkausstellung on 18 August 1933, its price fixed at 76 Reichsmark. 100,000 units were sold during the exhibition, in 1938 the DKE38 followed, the price fixed at 35 RM. AEG, founded in 1883 by Emil Rathenau, showed the first practical tape recorder. In 1939 the exhibition was called Grosse Deutsche Funk- und Fernseh-Ausstellung, the Einheits-Fernseh-Empfänger E1, a TV set designed to be affordable for everybody, was introduced. The physical display size was 7.68 ×8.86, plans for large-scale manufacture were thwarted by the outbreak of World War II. Color TV was also introduced, based on an invention by Werner Flechsig, multinational Dutch electronics corporation Philips introduced the compact audio cassette medium for audio storage and the first cassette recorder, developed by ir. Lou Ottens and his team at the Philips factory in Hasselt, at the 1963 show, IFA official website Highlights of past exhibitions from 1926 to 2005
41.
Frans van Houten
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François Adrianus Frans van Houten is the successor to Gerard Kleisterlee, as Chief Executive Officer of the Dutch company of Royal Philips Electronics, taking over the position on 1 April 2011. He held several positions in the company, becoming co-head of the electronics division in 2002. In November 2004, he became CEO of Philips Semiconductors, where he led the spin-off of the division, van Houten left his position as Chief Executive Officer, NXP on 31 December 2008. On 8 July 2010 he was nominated to succeed Gerard Kleisterlee as CEO of Philips
US$ 9.5 billion (2016)
US$ -150 million (2016)
