Netgear

Netgear, Inc. (stylized, trademarked, and marketed as NETGEAR) is an American global networking company that delivers products to consumers, businesses and service providers. The company operates in three business segments: retail, commercial, and service provider.

History

The company was incorporated January 8, 1996, as a subsidiary of Bay Networks, to "focus on providing networking solutions for small businesses and homes." In August 1998, the company was purchased by Nortel as part of its acquisition of Bay Networks. Netgear remained a wholly owned subsidiary of Nortel until March 2000, when it began transitioning to third-party ownership. It became fully independent from Nortel as of February 2002.

Netgear sells products through multiple sales channels worldwide, including traditional retailers, online retailers, wholesale distributors, direct market resellers ("DMRs"), value-added resellers ("VARs"), and broadband service providers. Its principal competitors include: within the consumer markets, companies such as Apple, Belkin, D-Link, Linksys, Roku, and Western Digital; and within the business markets, companies such as Allied Telesis, Barracuda, Buffalo, Data Robotics, Dell, Cyberoam, D-Link, Fortinet, Hewlett-Packard, Huawei, Cisco Systems, Linksys, QNAP Systems, Seagate Technology, SonicWALL, Sophos, Synology, WatchGuard and Western Digital; and within the service provider markets, companies such as Actiontec, ARRIS, Comtrend, D-Link, Hitron, Huawei, Motorola Solutions, Pace, SAGEM, Scientific Atlanta-a Cisco company, SMC Networks, Technicolor, Ubee, Compal Broadband, ZTE and ZyXEL.