To celebrate Chinese New Year, we’re shining the spotlight on some of our favourite Chinese and Taiwanese technology companies. Today, we’re looking at the company behind the Boxee Box, D-Link.
One of the pioneer networking companies, D-Link began its life in 1986 under the catchy name of Datex Systems Inc. It was only in 1994 when the company was listed on the Taiwanese stock exchange that they changed their name to D-Link. With a company motto of “Building Networks for People”, D-Link’s main business has always been around core networking. Their engineers have a long history of innovation in the network space, with patents and copyrights on networking technologies, including Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) computer chips, among other things.
While the company has historically been focussed on delivering businesses and consumers the best networking experience, late last year they branched out with a collaboration with Boxee to create the Boxee Box, a media streaming box with a unique design and intelligent social networking options. While the local version lacked a lot of the online content partnerships our US cousins enjoyed, it was still a refreshing product in terms of design and functionality.
While routers aren’t quite as sexy a gadget as a smartphone, they’ve become an essential ingredient in almost every home and business these days, and D-Link is still regarded as one of the pioneering companies in this space. With the NBN bringing broadband awareness to the entire country, D-Link is surely destined to continue leading the way for home networks in the years to come.