Belkin headquarters in Los Angeles
 

Belkin International, Inc., is a California 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.

 

History

Belkin was founded in 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.

 

Product range

• Networking: Routers

• iPhone, iPad, and iPod accessories: cases, FM transmitters, chargers

• Energy-saving accessories for the home

• Notebook and netbook accessories: cases, cushions, cooling pads, power adapters

• Data center accessories: racks and enclosures, KVM switches

• Surge protectors

• USB hubs and other connectivity peripherals, like the Easy Transfer Cable

• Copper and Fiber Optic Cables

 

Linksys Acquisition

According to Yahoo! News article Cisco plans to exit consumer market and sell its Linksys brand to Belkin in March 2013 for an undisclosed price.

According to PCWorld News article Belkin officially completed the acquisition of Linksys on March 15, 2013. Belkin will maintain both its own brand and the Linksys brand into the future, according to Mathieu Whelan, a Linksys marketing manager who now works for Belkin.

 

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

 

• CES Innovations Awards:

o 2009 "Best of" in Multi-Room Audio/Video Category: FlyWire 

o 2008 "Best of" in Portable Media Accessories Category: TuneStudio 

o 2006 "Best of" in Video Category: Nostromo n52  
 

• IDSA Design Awards Ranking – Belkin ranked in top list of corporations  

o 2002 IDEA / BusinessWeek Award: GOLD – Belkin OmniView SoHo Series KVM 

o 2009 IDEA Award: BRONZE – Belkin Powerline AV+  
 

• Multiple iF Design Awards; in 2009, Belkin placed in the Top 50 of all company rankings for the number of IF awards won. 

o 2008 TuneStudio and SportCommand  

o 2007 Clamp-On Surge Protector, Compact Surge Protector, Conceal Surge Protector, Flip KVM  

o 2006 TuneBase and TuneBaseFM, MediaPilot  

o 2005 USB 7-Port Hub, PureAV Home Theater Power Consoles, PureAV Home Theater Power Conditioner 

o 2003 USB Media Reader Writer  
 

• 2005 Business 2.0 Bottom Line Design Awards – Belkin PureAV Power Console 

 

Community work

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 a innappropriate 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".