50 Shocking Facts About Tech Companies

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26Lenovo Computers

Lenovo Computers

Lenovo Computers is partially owned by the Chinese government and their computers come pre-loaded with secret back door access. As a result MI6, the CIA and other spy agencies have banned their use.


27. Sony has a patent on making viewers yell product names out loud to end TV ads.


28. Instagram started as a Whiskey meetup app. After analyzing how people used it, they relaunched it as Instagram and sold it for $1 billion 2 years later.


29. In 2002, Fujitsu made a device called the “iPad,” and Apple had to pay over $4 million to Fujitsu to buy the trademark rights.


30. Samsung originally sold noodles. It wasn't until 1970 that they started selling electronics.


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31iOS

iOS

The term “iOS” does not belong to Apple but is instead licensed from Cisco, who owns the trademark.


32. Microsoft tried to monopolize the early web browser market by making it difficult to install other web browsers and slowing down Windows if Internet Explorer was uninstalled.


33. Snapchat was originally marketed as an app to send nude pictures called Picaboo.


34. In 1973, IBM offered its UPC bar code proposal to the grocery industry for free. The industry accepted a very close standard to their proposal. However, IBM also made the first technology capable of reading the bar codes and made tons of money selling the equipment to grocery stores.


35. In 2010, Microsoft held a funeral to mark the death of the iPhone when it launched its own line of phones.


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361200mm Lens

1200mm Lens

There is an extremely rare camera lens manufactured by Canon. It has 1200mm focal length and it costs roughly $90,000.


37. Facebook acquired Onavo VPN to track user's full online activity and app usage details. With this, they could tell that Instagram’s Stories crippled Snapchat Stories even before Snapchat made it public.


38. In 2005, Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, Intuit, and Pixar started a coordinated effort to push down their workers’ wages.


39. William Shockley, a co-inventor of the transistor, decided to cease silicon-based research. The remaining researchers disagreed with him and went on to form Intel, AMD, and National Semiconductor.


40. The reason all videos are subtitled on Netflix is that the National Association for the Deaf filed a class-action lawsuit against them in 2010.


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41Android

Android

In late 2004, Samsung had the opportunity to buy Android but passed on the investment because they did not see any potential. Google acquired it two weeks later.


42. HP founders, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, flipped a coin to decide whether their company would be named Hewlett-Packard (HP) or Packard-Hewlett (PH).


43. In 2012, before the introduction of Uber, a Toronto Taxi license was sold for $360,000. By 2018, they were rumored to be down to $65,000 and likely still dropping. The New York City taxi medallions topped out at $1.3 million in 2013, and now are as low as $160,000.


44. Mark Zuckerberg attempted to buy Snapchat for $3 billion in November of 2013 but was rejected. Almost 3 years later, Instagram cloned Snapchat’s main features and launched ‘Instagram Stories’.


45. Sony is primarily an insurance company in Japan and electronics are not their main source of income.


46Xbox

Xbox

The original Xbox was originally pitched to Dell, Compaq, and Gateway to all manufacture the system while Microsoft would simply provide the operating system, just like they had done with Windows and the PC. Each company turned them down.


47. In March 2011, Korea’s anti-trust regulator went to a Samsung facility in Suwon to raid the building, looking for evidence of possible collusion between the company and wireless operators to fix the prices of mobile phones. Before investigators could get inside employees began eating documents.


48. Spotify pays artists between 150-200% more than regular US radio stations.


49. Microsoft was making $5-$15 on every Android phone sold because of patents, peaking at $2 billion in 2013.


50. In January 2012, 150 employees of Foxconn, a Taiwanese technology company and contract manufacturer for products including the iPhone, iPad and Playstation 4, threatened to commit mass suicide in protest of their working conditions.

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