It's not so easy for a hardware company to go into business selling software on the side.
Now, one hardware company thinks hard-core gamers are ready to take their action on the move, too.
Dell, which is the third largest computer hardware company by sales, is likely a welcome arrival for Fremont, Calif.
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Sun, a hardware company, never made much from Java, basically giving it away and spending little on the brand.
Owning a hardware company will also result in lower company margins--online ads are a lot more profitable business than smartphones.
Samsung is a hardware company, It is a very large electronic components manufacturer and manufacture most of its hardware components.
For instance Oracle bought Sun Microsystems, a failing hardware company, and put a fired CEO in charge of it.
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However, it feels like sometime during 2012, Apple decided to focus on being a hardware company and not a software company.
Ballmer told ReadWriteWeb recently Microsoft will now become a consumer hardware company, building its own lines of tablets and game machines.
Apple must remember it is a software company, not a hardware company.
For example, in the mid-1970s, I raised a second round of equity capital for a computer hardware company by calling 75 venture capital companies.
Based in San Francisco, Leap Motion is a motion-control software and hardware company developing the world's most powerful and sensitive 3-D motion-control and motion-sensing technology.
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That includes a business-model shift from hardware company to software licensor.
Inc. named it the fastest growing hardware company in North America.
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The open source hardware company has partnered with Sparkfun ( see my popular post on Nathan Seidle and his leadership style) to manufacture the circuit boards.
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But the economics of starting a hardware company have changed.
The group of folks bent on crafting a real-life version of Star Trek's "Holodeck" -- a virtual playground, essentially -- are getting official support from gaming hardware company Razer.
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Ms. Whitman: I'm sorry about the state of the Oracle-H-P relationship because for many years Oracle and H-P were the best demonstrated practice of collaboration between a software company and hardware company.
And while a boutique mobile OS serving a few hundred million users might be enough for Microsoft, BlackBerry, or Jolla, the simple fact is that (server farms aside), Facebook is not a hardware company.
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Rumors of a Facebook phone have been swirling for years, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly denied the company was "building" a phone, saying Facebook was not interested in becoming a hardware company.
Apple in fact is a hardware company and more than 60% of its earnings come from selling iPhones and around 30% of earnings from selling iPads and all others together only represent less than 10%.
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That could portend a future where BlackBerry is more of a software company than a hardware company, echoing the kind of dramatic pivot once made by IBM, and which could even lie in store for competitor Nokia.
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Will any hardware company break through?
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Valve head Gabe Newell says the company isn't stopping any planned hardware initiatives, despite reports of layoffs at the company and the news that hardware lead Jeri Ellsworth was fired.
So in this round, the company best known for hardware leads with a software advantage for its product, and the company best known for software leads with a hardware advantage for its product.
Three years ago, Sony endured one of its most troubling hardware launches in company history when it released the PSP Go.
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In essence, Facebook instantaneously becomes a hardware and services company.
And Oracle, the software, hardware, and database company, recently announced its Cloud API managing infrastructure.
The company makes hardware and software to optimize delivery of network-based applications for business customers.
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