Logitech

Logitech's objective is to strengthen its leadership in the growing market for personal interface products, linking people to the digital world wherever and whenever they need to access digital information to communicate, learn and play. The Company has historically served the installed base of PCs by offering innovative personal interface devices to address the needs of the desktop. While PCs are being used more and more as the digital hub to access information and communicate, other platforms such as game consoles and cell phones are also becoming a rich resource for people to access information, communicate and enjoy an expanding offering of interactive games. Logitech believes that the Company is well positioned to take advantage of the many opportunities in this growing marketplace. Daniel Borel and Pierluigi Zappacosta incorporate in Switzerland the company that will eventually be called Logitech. The company enters the retail market with the introduction of the C7 mouse. Logitech gains a listing on the NASDAQ and divests its scanner business. Guerrino De Luca takes over the CEO position from Borel, who remains chairman; the QuickCam PC video camera division of Connectix Corporation is acquired. Engelbart's mouse would change the course of computing history and would launch Logitech as a company a decade later. The first commercial presentation of the mouse also would present the first "windows"-type graphical user interface, which, controlled by the mouse, would enable the computer to become accessible for individual and home use, and not the private domain of highly trained programmers. In conjunction with the mouse, Engelbart would introduce such basic computer concepts as the onscreen combining and manipulating of text and graphics, hypertext and hyperdocuments (which would become extremely important for later Internet development), and videoconferencing. Engelbart's place in the computer industry of the 1960s and 1970s was highlighted by his office's position as the second node of the ARPAnet, which would later become the Internet. Engelbart also proved an inspiration for a new generation of engineers and computer industry developers, including two Stanford University engineering students, Daniel Borel, from Switzerland, and Pierluigi Zappacosta, from Italy. Inspired by the burgeoning Silicon Valley scene, Borel and Zappacosta decided to set up their own company to produce software products. The partners hoped to bring the same sense of entrepreneurship that they had found in California to the European computer industry. In contrast to the United States, where high-tech companies could find a vast pool of venture capital and other financial backing, especially for the development of computer technology and products, the European situation in the late 1970s remained fixed on an older corporate model. Unable to find the venture capital that they needed, and with no banks willing to risk a multimillion-dollar load, Borel and Zappacosta were forced to place their dream of starting their own software company on hold. Engelbart's invention would change the pair's direction. As Zappacosta told Fortune: "We didn't want to be in mice. They seemed to be beneath our intelligence. We wanted to be a software company--like Microsoft ." Nonetheless, it was with the computer mouse that Borel and Zappacosta finally would go into business. In 1981 the pair acquired the U.S. distribution rights for a mouse designed in Switzerland. Hardware proved an easier investment sell than the pair's software dream. With the backing of a number of Swiss investors, Borel and Zappacosta set up the company that would later become known as Logitech. (The name, which would not be adopted until 1988, was derived from the root of the French word for software, logiciel, plus the word tech. ) Originally operating from a "garage" shop, the company was established with headquarters in Apples, Switzerland, but with a strong U.S. presence from the star