New Media Corporation

New Media Corporation was founded by Carl Perkins, Rod Corder, and Eric McAfee, in Irvine, California, in March 1992.[1][2][3] Perkins and Corder had previously worked together in the early 1980s at Rockwell Semiconductor Systems (which later changed their name to Conexant) of Newport Beach, California, where both led a team of chip designers within the company. In 1989, they founded Togai InfraLogic with another business partner. Togai InfraLogic was founded to capitalize on their ideas on designs for math coprocessor chips that each had developed in their spare time. The company later sold a Japanese speech recognition ASIC to Canon. In 1990, Perkins and Corder left Togai InfraLogic over differences of expectations for the company's future with the third business partner. Perkins and Corder both ended up at ITT Inc., designing ASICs for use in expansion card products for personal computers. It was in this capacity that the two got the inspiration to found New Media Corporation. The duo had been observing the fledgling PC Card expansion bus standard for laptops in the early 1990s and believed they could design PC Card products that were both plug-and-play and intuitive to configure. In 1991, they discovered Eric McAfee, an investor of Silicon Beach technology companies, through a mutual friend and decided to hire him as chief financial officer (CFO).[2]

New Media was the first company to manufacture PC Cards in the United States, according to the Orange County Business Journal. Within a year of its existence it gained large laptop manufacturers such as Toshiba and Compaq as clients, manufacturing cards on an OEM basis and becoming a major player in the PC Card field.[2] With these clients, New Media designed and manufactured the cards for them to rebadge and provide as private-label optional peripherals for their respective users.[2][4] The company earned $8.5 million in sales within its first year.[3] Later in 1992, New Media began selling their own PC Cards to resellers and retailers.[2] In December 1992, the company introduced the PalmModem, a modem intended for Hewlett-Packard's 95LX palmtop computer; although it supported other laptops and subnotebooks, it came with software and device drivers optimized for the HP 95LX's internal hardware.[5] The PalmModem sold in high numbers and gave New Media further industry recognition.[2] The company soon attracted customers such as AST Research, Gateway 2000, NEC, and Zeos, and between November 1993 and October 1994, New Media grew from 54 workers to over 100.[3][4]

The company by late 1993 included in its catalog PC Card not only modems but sound cards, SCSI host adapters, Ethernet adapters, wireless DSSS network adapters, and more.[3][6] New Media's steady growth attracted the attention of AMP Incorporated, a major manufacturer of electronic connectors based in Pennsylvania, who invested $6.5 million in the company in exchange for a 10-percent stake in May 1993.[2][3] AMP's minority interest soon grew to a controlling 25-percent stake with the infusion of another $9 million in 1994, allowing the company to appoint directors at will. In early 1995, AMP orchestrated the ouster of Perkins and McAfee within the company's board of directors, respectively CEO and CFO, leaving Corder as the sole co-founder of the company left, as vice president of engineering. McAfee soon after sued New Media for wrongful termination; Perkins was kept along as a consultant of the company's legal department, keeping track of McAfee's lawsuit.[2]

By 1995 New Media held 10 percent of the total PC Card market, competing against larger companies such as Practical Peripherals, Xircom, and 3Com. They began to lag behind the PC Card modem market with respect to maximum bit rates of their newest products by late 1995. This combined with having to deal with two separate lawsuits (one issued by themselves against a Orange County competitor they accused of industrial espionage in poaching their workers) compelled management to either sell off the company to the highest bidder or to arrange for the company to go public.[2] In December 1995, 10 percent of New Media's workers were laid off.[7]

The company's situation had simmered by the turn of the millennium, with neither action being taken and the company remaining private. The company had stabilized at roughly 30 workers between 1998 and 2000.[8][9] It formally dissolved in 2003, around the same time the ExpressCard bus standard was formalized, which soon obsoleted the PC Card standard.[10][11]