1.
San Jose, California
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San Jose, officially the City of San José, is the economic, cultural, and political center of Silicon Valley and the largest city in Northern California. With an estimated 2015 population of 1,026,908, it is the third most populous city in California and the tenth most populous in United States. Located in the center of the Santa Clara Valley, on the shore of San Francisco Bay. San Jose is the county seat of Santa Clara County, the most affluent county in California. San Jose is the largest city in both the San Francisco Bay Area and the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland Combined Statistical Area, which contain 7.7 million and 8.7 million people respectively. Before the arrival of the Spanish, the area around San Jose was inhabited by the Ohlone people, San Jose was founded on November 29,1777, as the Pueblo of San José de Guadalupe, the first civilian town founded in Spanish Alta California. When California gained statehood in 1850, San Jose became the states first capital, following World War II, San Jose experienced an economic boom, with a rapid population growth and aggressive annexation of nearby cities and communities carried out in the 1950s and 60s. The rapid growth of the high-technology and electronics industries further accelerated the transition from a center to an urbanized metropolitan area. Results of the 1990 U. S. Census indicated that San Jose had officially surpassed San Francisco as the most populous city in Northern California, by the 1990s, San Jose and the rest of Silicon Valley had become the global center for the high tech and internet industries. San Jose is considered to be a city, notable for its affluence. San Joses location within the high tech industry, as a cultural, political. San Jose is one of the wealthiest major cities in the United States and the world, and has the third highest GDP per capita in the world, according to the Brookings Institute. Major global tech companies including Cisco Systems, eBay, Adobe Systems, PayPal, Brocade, Samsung, Acer, Prior to European settlement, the area was inhabited by several groups of Ohlone Native Americans. The first lasting European presence began with a series of Franciscan missions established from 1769 by Junípero Serra, San Jose came under Mexican rule in 1821 after Mexico broke with the Spanish crown. It then became part of the United States, after it capitulated in 1846, on March 27,1850, San Jose became the second incorporated city in the state, with Josiah Belden its first mayor. San Jose was Californias first state capital, and hosted the first, today the Circle of Palms Plaza in downtown is the historical marker for the first state capital. The city was a station on the Butterfield Overland Mail route, in the period 1900 through 1910, San Jose served as a center for pioneering invention, innovation, and impact in both lighter-than-air and heavier-than-air flight. These activities were led principally by John Montgomery and his peers, the City of San Jose has established Montgomery Park, a Monument at San Felipe and Yerba Buena Roads, and John J. Montgomery Elementary School in his honor
2.
Apple Inc.
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Apple is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services. Apples consumer software includes the macOS and iOS operating systems, the media player, the Safari web browser. Its online services include the iTunes Store, the iOS App Store and Mac App Store, Apple Music, Apple was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne in April 1976 to develop and sell personal computers. It was incorporated as Apple Computer, Inc. in January 1977, Apple joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average in March 2015. In November 2014, Apple became the first U. S. company to be valued at over US$700 billion in addition to being the largest publicly traded corporation in the world by market capitalization. The company employs 115,000 full-time employees as of July 2015 and it operates the online Apple Store and iTunes Store, the latter of which is the worlds largest music retailer. Consumers use more than one billion Apple products worldwide as of March 2016, Apples worldwide annual revenue totaled $233 billion for the fiscal year ending in September 2015. This revenue accounts for approximately 1. 25% of the total United States GDP.1 billion, the corporation receives significant criticism regarding the labor practices of its contractors and its environmental and business practices, including the origins of source materials. Apple was founded on April 1,1976, by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, the Apple I kits were computers single-handedly designed and hand-built by Wozniak and first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club. The Apple I was sold as a motherboard, which was less than what is now considered a personal computer. The Apple I went on sale in July 1976 and was market-priced at $666.66, Apple was incorporated January 3,1977, without Wayne, who sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800. Multimillionaire Mike Markkula provided essential business expertise and funding of $250,000 during the incorporation of Apple, during the first five years of operations revenues grew exponentially, doubling about every four months. Between September 1977 and September 1980 yearly sales grew from $775,000 to $118m, the Apple II, also invented by Wozniak, was introduced on April 16,1977, at the first West Coast Computer Faire. It differed from its rivals, the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, because of its character cell-based color graphics. While early Apple II models used ordinary cassette tapes as storage devices, they were superseded by the introduction of a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drive and interface called the Disk II. The Apple II was chosen to be the platform for the first killer app of the business world, VisiCalc. VisiCalc created a market for the Apple II and gave home users an additional reason to buy an Apple II. Before VisiCalc, Apple had been a distant third place competitor to Commodore, by the end of the 1970s, Apple had a staff of computer designers and a production line
3.
Dell
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Dell Inc. is a multinational computer technology company based in Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. The company is a subsidiary of Dell Technologies, which was formed by the 2016 merger of Dell Inc. eponymously named after its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest technological corporations in the world, employing more than 103,300 people worldwide. Dell sells personal computers, servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals, HDTVs, cameras, printers, MP3 players, and electronics built by other manufacturers. Dell was a pure hardware vendor for much of its existence, Dell was listed at number 51 in the Fortune 500 list, until 2014. After going private in 2013, the confidential nature of its financial information prevents the company from being ranked by Fortune. In 2015, it was the third largest PC vendor in the world after Lenovo, Dell is currently the #1 shipper of PC monitors in the world. Dell is the sixth largest company in Texas by total revenue and it is the second largest non-oil company in Texas – behind AT&T – and the largest company in the Greater Austin area. It was a traded company, as well as a component of the NASDAQ-100 and S&P500. On September 7,2016, Dell Inc. acquired EMC Corporation to form Dell Technologies, Michael Dell founded PCs Limited while a student of the University of Texas at Austin. The dorm-room headquartered company sold IBM PC-compatible computers built from stock components, Dell dropped out of school to focus full-time on his fledgling business, after getting $1,000 in expansion-capital from his family. In 1985, the company produced the first computer of its own design, the Turbo PC, Dell appeared in PCs Limited advertisements in national magazines, asking readers to give us a chance to show you what can do. Selling directly to consumers custom-assembled computers according to a selection of options, in 1986, Michael Dell brought in Lee Walker, a 51-year-old venture capitalist, as president and chief operating officer, to serve as mentor and to implement Dells ideas for growing the company. Walker was also instrumental in recruiting members to the board of directors when the company went public in 1988, the company dropped the PC’s Limited name in 1987 to become Dell Computer Corporation and began expanding globally. In June 1988, Dells market capitalization grew by $30 million to $80 million from its June 22 initial public offering of 3.5 million shares at $8.50 a share. In 1992, Fortune magazine included Dell Computer Corporation in its list of the worlds 500 largest companies, making Michael Dell the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company ever. In 1993, to complement its own direct sales channel, Dell planned to sell PCs at big-box retail outlets such as Wal-Mart, bain consultant Kevin Rollins persuaded Michael Dell to pull out of these deals, believing they would be money losers in the long run. Margins at retail were thin at best and Dell left the channel in 1994. Rollins would soon join Dell full-time and eventually become the company President, Dell found an opportunity among PC-savvy individuals who liked the convenience of buying direct, customizing their PC to their means, and having it delivered in days
4.
Google
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Google is an American multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products. These include online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, software, Google was founded in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph. D. students at Stanford University, in California. Together, they own about 14 percent of its shares, and they incorporated Google as a privately held company on September 4,1998. An initial public offering took place on August 19,2004, in August 2015, Google announced plans to reorganize its various interests as a conglomerate called Alphabet Inc. Google, Alphabets leading subsidiary, will continue to be the company for Alphabets Internet interests. Upon completion of the restructure, Sundar Pichai became CEO of Google, replacing Larry Page, rapid growth since incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions, and partnerships beyond Googles core search engine. The company leads the development of the Android mobile operating system, the Google Chrome web browser, and Chrome OS, the new hardware chief, Rick Osterloh, stated, a lot of the innovation that we want to do now ends up requiring controlling the end-to-end user experience. Google has also experimented with becoming an Internet carrier, alexa, a company that monitors commercial web traffic, lists Google. com as the most visited website in the world. Several other Google services also figure in the top 100 most visited websites, including YouTube, Googles mission statement, from the outset, was to organize the worlds information and make it universally accessible and useful, and its unofficial slogan was Dont be evil. In October 2015, the motto was replaced in the Alphabet corporate code of conduct by the phrase Do the right thing, Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in Stanford, California. They called this new technology PageRank, it determined a websites relevance by the number of pages, and the importance of those pages, Page and Brin originally nicknamed their new search engine BackRub, because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. Originally, Google ran under Stanford Universitys website, with the domains google. stanford. edu, the domain name for Google was registered on September 15,1997, and the company was incorporated on September 4,1998. It was based in the garage of a friend in Menlo Park, craig Silverstein, a fellow PhD student at Stanford, was hired as the first employee. The first funding for Google was an August 1998 contribution of $100,000 from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, given before Google was incorporated. At least three other investors invested in 1998, Amazon. com founder Jeff Bezos, Stanford University computer science professor David Cheriton. Author Ken Auletta claims that each invested $250,000, early in 1999, Brin and Page decided they wanted to sell Google to Excite. They went to Excite CEO George Bell and offered to sell it to him for $1 million, vinod Khosla, one of Excites venture capitalists, talked the duo down to $750,000, but Bell still rejected it. Googles initial public offering took place five years later, on August 19,2004, at that time Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt agreed to work together at Google for 20 years, until the year 2024
5.
Hewlett-Packard
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The Hewlett-Packard Company or shortened to Hewlett-Packard was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. The company was founded in a garage in Palo Alto by William Bill Redington Hewlett and David Dave Packard. HP was the worlds leading PC manufacturer from 2007 to Q22013 and it specialized in developing and manufacturing computing, data storage, and networking hardware, designing software and delivering services. HP also had services and consulting business around its products and partner products.4 billion in 2008, in November 2009, HP announced the acquisition of 3Com, with the deal closing on April 12,2010. On April 28,2010, HP announced the buyout of Palm, on September 2,2010, HP won its bidding war for 3PAR with a $33 a share offer, which Dell declined to match. On October 6,2014, Hewlett-Packard announced plans to split the PC and printers business from its enterprise products, the split closed on November 1,2015, and resulted in two publicly traded companies, HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. William Redington Hewlett and David Packard graduated with degrees in engineering from Stanford University in 1935. The company originated in a garage in nearby Palo Alto during a fellowship they had with a past professor, Terman was considered a mentor to them in forming Hewlett-Packard. In 1939, Packard and Hewlett established Hewlett-Packard in Packards garage with a capital investment of US$538. Hewlett and Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett, HP incorporated on August 18,1947, and went public on November 6,1957. Of the many projects they worked on, their very first financially successful product was an audio oscillator. This allowed them to sell the Model 200A for $54.40 when competitors were selling less stable oscillators for over $200, the Model 200 series of generators continued until at least 1972 as the 200AB, still tube-based but improved in design through the years. They worked on technology and artillery shell fuses during World War II. Hewlett-Packards HP Associates division, established around 1960, developed semiconductor devices primarily for internal use, instruments and calculators were some of the products using these devices. HP partnered in the 1960s with Sony and the Yokogawa Electric companies in Japan to develop several high-quality products, the products were not a huge success, as there were high costs in building HP-looking products in Japan. HP and Yokogawa formed a joint venture in 1963 to market HP products in Japan, HP bought Yokogawa Electrics share of Hewlett-Packard Japan in 1999. HP spun off a company, Dynac, to specialize in digital equipment. The name was picked so that the HP logo hp could be turned upside down to be a reverse image of the logo dy of the new company
6.
Lenovo
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It designs, develops, manufactures and sells personal computers, tablet computers, smartphones, workstations, servers, electronic storage devices, IT management software, and smart televisions. Since 2013, Lenovo is the worlds largest personal computer vendor by unit sales and it markets the ThinkPad line of notebook computers, IdeaPad and Yoga lines of notebook laptops, and the IdeaCentre and ThinkCentre lines of desktops. Lenovo has operations in more than 60 countries and sells its products in around 160 countries. S and it operates a joint venture with EMC called LenovoEMC, which sells network-attached storage solutions. It also has a joint venture with NEC, Lenovo NEC Holdings, Lenovo was founded in Beijing in 1984 as Legend and was incorporated in Hong Kong in 1988. Lenovo acquired IBMs personal computer business in 2005 and agreed to acquire its Intel-based server business in 2014, Lenovo entered the smartphone market in 2012 and as of 2014 was the largest vendor of smartphones in Mainland China. In January 2014, Lenovo agreed to acquire the mobile handset maker Motorola Mobility from Google. Lenovo is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the Hang Seng China-Affiliated Corporations Index, Lenovo is a portmanteau of Le- and novo, Latin ablative for new. The Chinese name means association or connected thinking, for the first 20 years of its existence, the companys English name was Legend. In 2002, Yang Yuanqing decided to abandon the Legend brand name to expand internationally, Legend was already in use by many businesses worldwide, making it impossible to register in most jurisdictions. In April 2003, the publicly announced its new name, Lenovo, with an advertising campaign including huge billboards. Lenovo spent 18 million RMB on a television advertising campaign. The billboards showed the Lenovo logo against blue sky with copy that read, by the end of 2003, Lenovo had spent a total of 200 million RMB on rebranding. In 2015, Lenovo revealed a new logo at Lenovo Tech World in Beijing, Lenovos new logo, created by Saatchi, New York, can be changed by its advertising agencies and sales partners, within restrictions, to fit the context. It has a lounging e and is surrounded by a box that can be changed to use a relevant scene, Lenovos Chief Marketing Officer David Roman said, When we first started looking at it, it wasnt about just a change in typography or the look of the logo. We asked If we really are a net-driven, customer-centric company and we came up with the idea of a digital logo first … designed to be used on the internet and adaptable to context. Liu Chuanzhi founded Lenovo in 1984 with a group of ten engineers in Beijing with 200,000 yuan, Lenovo officially states that it was founded on 1 November 1984. The Chinese government approved Lenovos incorporation on the same day, jiǎ Xùfú, one of the founders of Lenovo, indicates the first meeting in preparation for starting the company was held on 17 October of the same year. Eleven people, the entirety of the staff, attended
