Industry Consumer electronics Website www.belkin.com CEO Chet Pipkin (9 Sep 2011–) Founded 18 April 1983 | Number of employees 1000+ Technical support 080679 12120 Founder Chet Pipkin Type of business Private | |
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Key people Chet Pipkin, Chairman, Founder, CEO Headquarters Playa Vista, Los Angeles, California, United States Profiles | ||
Amazon echo with belkin wemo light switches and phillips hue led bulbs
Belkin International, Inc., is an American manufacturer of consumer electronics that specializes in connectivity devices. Headquartered in Playa Vista, Los Angeles, California, it sells various consumer and commercial product lines, including routers, iPod and iPhone accessories, mobile computing accessories, surge protectors, network switches, hubs, (USB and computer network) cables, KVM switches, racks and enclosures, and other peripherals. Belkin International is the parent company for Belkin, Linksys and Wemo branded products and services.
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History
Belkin was founded in April 18, 1983 in Hawthorne, California, by Chet Pipkin. It has twice made Inc. magazine's list of 500 fastest-growing privately held companies in the United States. It has major offices across the globe, including in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Australia.
Linksys Acquisition
According to a PCWorld News article, Belkin officially completed the acquisition of Linksys on March 15, 2013.
Awards
Belkin was in the "Inner City Top 100" list for six consecutive years, and the Los Angeles Business Journal’s “Fastest Growing Private Companies” list for five.
Belkin was awarded iLounge's Accessory Maker of the Year Award for 2007 and its TuneFM was awarded iLounge's FM Transmitter of the Year Award.
Belkin's TuneBaseFM was awarded iLounge's Car Accessory of the Year Award for 2008.
Sponsorship and community work
Between May 2013 and the end of the 2014 season, Belkin sponsored a Dutch professional cycling team, Belkin Pro Cycling Team. Belkin stepped in after the team formerly known as Rabobank lost their headline sponsor.
Belkin is involved in the local Compton community through the ASAP (Advanced Surveillance and Protection Plan) program with the LASD (LA County Sheriff’s Department) and the Everybody Wins reading program. Belkin supports Susan G. Komen for the Cure to fight breast cancer through its pink ribbon iPod cases that have helped raise $350,000 for the organization. In 2007, Belkin made a holiday donation to the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative.
Criticism
In 2003, Belkin released a home use wireless router which would occasionally replace users' HTTP requests with an advertisement for Belkin's filtering software. Belkin received some intense criticism for this from technically literate customers and others who described it as a man-in-the-middle attack or a form of session hijacking. Belkin initially treated this as a public relations problem rather than an inappropriate action on their part, but later relented and issued a firmware update deleting this functionality from the product.
In early 2009, a Belkin 'online sales representative' was discovered paying Amazon.com, Newegg and Buy.com users to manipulate reviews of a notoriously buggy Belkin router. Belkin's President, Mark Reynoso, responded to criticism, saying that the company does not engage in unethical practices, noting however that 'one of our employees' may have been responsible. On January 19, 2009, gizmodo.com published a letter from an anonymous Belkin worker, where the employee claims that for years all workers were pressed upon to "do whatever is needed to get good product reviews and good press", which included "sending blog writers a device with custom firmware that hides known bugs", "faking hardware logo certifications", as well as "writing poor reviews of competitors products".