
Foxconn buys Belkin for $866M - Rifu
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/26/foxconn-buys-peripheral-maker-belkin-for-866m/
======
luhn
> You probably know Belkin for its various lines of accessories, peripherals,
> and assorted consumer electronics; Linksys, surely the most recognizable
> router brand, is a subsidiary.

Apparently Cisco sold Linksys to Belkin in 2013. That's news to me.

~~~
duxup
Cisco had money burning a hole in their pocket and bought a some consumer
stuff and then had no idea what to do with it ... so they sold most of it off,
or simply discontinued it (like flip video).

~~~
mygo
they discontinued flip video because after the acquisition they didn’t really
understand the consumer and then GoPro came and they got wreckt

~~~
giobox
I think the bigger problem was cellphones, especially the iPhone, gaining the
ability to record decent video.

Flip filled a convenient niche for a few years until the 3GS came along with
video support, after which it was useless for many consumers. This was the
only reason I bought a Flip, and the only reason anyone else I know with one
did.

Similarly, I think the first mainstream smartphones to record HD video wasn't
until 2010. Again flip had a small window with their HD models before
cellphones killed them again.

At least GoPro have (had?) a good story around their mounts and waterproofing,
there was nothing in my opinion a Flip did that cellphones didn't very quickly
do better.

~~~
mygo
This is true. I think the iPhone did the same thing to Garmin GPS and other
single-purpose hardware companies. They all lost so much of their market.

Apple already knew people were buying and would continue to buy these things,
and their innovation was just putting it all into one device. So you could buy
a Garmin GPS and a Flip video camera, and end up spending $300-$500 total and
carry 2 devices around, or you could just buy an iPhone 3GS for $199 and also
make phone calls with it.

I'm still trying to figure out the $1,000 price tag of an iPhone nowadays
however. Where is the substance behind that price? (And I own an iPhone, apple
watch, iPad Pro, a Macbook Pro, and a Macbook air, so I really doo appreciate
a good product, just can't comprehend the value proposition of a $1000
iPhone.)

~~~
tbrock
You do realize that no iPhone ever has cost $199 and that the price was
subsidized right?

~~~
mygo
The 16GB iPhone 3GS debuted for $199 with a contract from AT&T.

People were still going to have mobile phone contracts. The smartphone
replaced their cell phone just like it replaced their Garmin GPS and their
Flip video camera and their pocket planner. It was a compelling proposition.

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walrus01
The only good Belkin product I have ever seen is their 12 outlet power strip.
As a network engineer everything they make with an Ethernet/wifi interface is
complete shit. But this is not really news, D-Link, Netgear, many of their
competitors are also junk.

~~~
fro0116
Do you have any recommendations for alternatives?

~~~
walrus01
Separate the function of wifi and router. My home office, which is
bottlenecked by the docsis3.0 last mile, is on a Ubiquiti edgerouter-x ($46)
router. And then a single ubnt UAP-AC 2X2 MIMO, dual band 802.11ac AP ($79).

The OS on the ubnt edgerouter series is a fork of vyatta, which is Debian
based.

Also for people who know what they are doing, a mikrotik rb3011 would be a
good choice.

~~~
stephen_g
I've generally found the Ubiquiti hardware to be a fair bit better than
Mikrotik stuff (way better forwarding speeds with the accelerated Cavium
processors in the EdgeRouters - except the ER-X, which doesn't have the
hardware offload but is still useful). I find their web UI far less confusing
too. I know some guys who have used Mikrotiks a lot and swear by it, but
unless you're already experienced with Mikrotik interfaces I'd recommend the
Ubiquiti.

They also have a really good command line interface - which is lucky, because
the biggest downside with the Ubiquitis is that some (generally more obscure
and advanced) features can't be configured through the web UI.

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siruncledrew
Damn, I didn't know Foxconn was the 4th larges IT company with 726k employees:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_informatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_information_technology_companies)

~~~
r00fus
726k is _4th_ ?

~~~
yash1th
ranked by revenue. By employee count, it is the largest

~~~
mygo
that’s how you know it’s heavily inflated by manual labor / factory staff

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spiderPig
It is a little disconcerting that Foxconn (subject to deep Chinese government
overreach) will now own Linksys

~~~
bhouston
Foxconn is Taiwanese like Asus, Acer, Gigabyte, MSI, MediaTek, D-Link, and
HTC. Both Asus and D-Link are major router makers as well.

Also fun fact, nearly all routers use the same chips from Boardcom. The
majority of differences between routers is just firmware and packaging, the
guts are all the same.

~~~
coding123
It's a RoC

~~~
bhouston
Taiwan and China are quite distinct. It is not at all like Hong Kong and
China.

Details: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-
Strait_relations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Strait_relations)

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kbutler
Just today I contacted Belkin live support for a usb-c gigabit Ethernet
adapter that stopped working 1 month in. They are shipping me a replacement.

My previous experience was with a router that would occasionally fail under
load (e.g., torrents), requiring a restart. They sent a replacement for that,
too, but I never found a use for an unreliable router.

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bhouston
Neat. Belkin was pretty crap about 7 years or so ago but they raised their
game I find in the last couple years. They are pretty solid with decent prices
now.

I think there is a pretty good market for smart home accessories, various wifi
enabled devices like powerstrips, lights, cameras, locks, alarm systems, etc.
With Belkin's Walmart distribution network and their low costs, I think it may
be something they could target well.

~~~
canthonytucci
last belkin items I had were:

* an outlet multipler/usb charging thing - died

* lighting cables of various lengths - all died

maybe I have bad luck, but it seems to me like they are still making garbage.

~~~
walrus01
If you want good quality third party chargers and USB cables - buy Anker

~~~
Tepix
If Anker is so great, why don't they have TÜV/CCC/UL certified power supplies?

~~~
alfanick
Process of certification is heavy on cash, need some weird certifications?
Price of products will increase and customers will be hurt as a result (just
to make some minor portion of customers happy).

~~~
Tepix
I don't buy it. As long as their products aren't certified, I won't buy them.
Besides when you look at the reviews on Amazon, some of their chargers
allegedly catch fire or start to smell like burning plastic...

~~~
alfanick
Their products are obviously CE certified and some of them are PSE certified.
Good enough for me.

Edit: Needless to say, certifications are bullshit anyway, it's just a waiver
for lawyers - Samsung Galaxy Note 7 had all possible certification, yet it was
as more dangerous than any Anker product.

~~~
Maskawanian
CE isn't a certification. It is a standard that suppliers claim to adhere to.
It relies entirely on their word, but is not verified at all.

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peebtkxs
Was it Foxconn that was blocked from acquiring an American company earlier
this month? Is this acquisition a order of magnitude smaller?

Is it strange that this wasn’t blocked as well?

~~~
kobayashi
I think you're referring to Broadcom trying to acquire Qualcomm. Very
different situation. This is a good breakdown of why that was blocked:
[https://stratechery.com/2018/qualcomm-national-security-
and-...](https://stratechery.com/2018/qualcomm-national-security-and-patents/)

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bsimpson
Duplicate of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16684316](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16684316)

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JohnnyConatus
According to sources, Foxconn really didn't want to buy Belkin but that's all
they had at the store.

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ausjke
foxconn makes routers for all the vendors I think, e.g.
dlink.netgear,belkin...now Belkin might push its competitors away from
Foxconn's assembly lines

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ajinkyax
Just confirmed with my relative who works ta Belkin, Dubai. They just finished
call with them.. and news is already leaked.

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thrownaway954
i honestly would think that Belkin would be worth something in the billions.
they are the qtip of computer cables.

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shmerl
Hm. I wonder what will happen to Linksys supporting open source WiFi drivers
now for their WRT/ACS routers.

~~~
wtallis
Did they ever make meaningful contributions? I recall when they first revived
the WRT branding, they promised open-source support for the Marvell chipsets
they were now using, but it took an extremely long time for any code to show
up, and it was far from being in a state to upstream. I haven't paid close
attention since then, but I don't recall running across any mention that
Linksys was directly helping improve the open-source Marvell drivers.

~~~
shmerl
It's not upstreamed, but it's regularly updated:
[https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi](https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi)

I think @yuhhaurlin works for Linksys, but I'm not sure.

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reiichiroh
Does Belkin own Kensington and former joystick brand Gravis too?

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a-fried-egg
Good thing for Netgear

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erikb
> best known for manufacturing practically everything in the world

Huh? I thought they manufacture iPhone chips and that's it. Now they buy
peripherals because iphone itself won't make enough profit growth anymore to
give top management the multi-million-dollar bonuses they are used to.

