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Hoya Corporation

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Hoya Corporation
Native name
HOYA株式会社
Company typePublic (K.K)
TYO: 7741
TOPIX Large 70 Component
TOPIX 100 Component
IndustryPrecision instruments
FoundedHoya, Japan (November 1, 1941; 83 years ago (1941-11-01))
FoundersShoichi Yamanaka
Shigeru Yamanaka
HeadquartersShinjuku-ku, Tokyo 161-8525, Japan
Key people
Eiichiro Ikeda
(President and CEO)
Products
RevenueIncrease JP¥ 490 billion (FY 2014) (US$ 4.1 billion) (FY 2014)
Increase JP¥ 92.8 billion (FY 2014) (US$ 777 million) (FY 2014)
Number of employees
34,635 (as of March 31, 2015)
WebsiteOfficial website
Footnotes / references
[1][2][3]

Hoya Corporation (Hoya株式会社, Hōya Kabushiki-gaisha) is a Japanese company manufacturing optical products such as photomasks, photomask blanks and hard disk drive platters, contact lenses and eyeglass lenses for the health-care market,[4] medical photonics,[5] lasers, photographic filters, medical flexible endoscopy equipment, and software. Hoya Corporation is one of the Forbes Global 2000 Leading Companies[6] and Industry Week 1000 Company.[7]

History of Hoya-Pentax merger

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Hoya discussed a merger with Pentax into Hoya Pentax HD Corporation during 2007. Hoya's primary goal was to strengthen its medical-related business by taking advantage of Pentax's technologies and expertise in the field of endoscopes, intraocular lenses, surgical loupes, biocompatible ceramics, etc. It was speculated that Pentax's camera business could be sold off after the merger. The merger was initially intended to be completed by October 1, 2007.[8] However, Pentax management decided to not pursue the originally planned share swap, and other options for a merger were discussed.[9] On May 25, the Pentax board of directors accepted Hoya's offer for a merger.[10] On August 6, 2007, Hoya completed a friendly takeover bid for Pentax and acquired 90.59% of the company.[11] On October 29, 2007, Hoya and Pentax announced that Pentax, as the company ceasing to exist, will merge with and into Hoya on March 31, 2008.[12]

The acquired Pentax surveying instrument business (later IT Asahi Co., Ltd.) and camera business (now Pentax Ricoh Imaging Co., Ltd.) were sold to Taiwan Instrument Co., Ltd. in 2009 and Ricoh Co., Ltd. in 2011, respectively.

ReadSpeaker

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On July 13, 2017, it was announced that Hoya had acquired ReadSpeaker. ReadSpeaker was founded in 1999 and headquartered in Huis ter Heide, Utrecht in the Netherlands at the time of the acquisition.[13] ReadSpeaker is a text-to-speech technology that allows users to highlight words that are being spoken, and users can save the speech in an MP3 format.[14] It has been used to transform websites to speech. The International Herald Tribune employed the tool to turn into podcasts the stories it publishes online.[15] In a paper for the 2016 International Conference on Software Process Improvement, José Ortega and his coauthors said, ReadSpeaker "works 100% online, is a good reference but is commercial and costs".[16]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Corporate Profile". Hoya Corp. Archived from the original on September 24, 2017. Retrieved September 24, 2015.
  2. ^ "Company Snapshot". Bloomberg L.P. Retrieved September 24, 2015.
  3. ^ "Financials". Bloomberg L.P. Retrieved September 24, 2015.
  4. ^ "Home". Hoyalux iD. Retrieved August 10, 2014.[permanent dead link‍]
  5. ^ "Hoya Photonics, Inc™". Hoyaphotonicsinc.com. Archived from the original on September 13, 2017. Retrieved August 10, 2014.
  6. ^ "Company Profile". Forbes. Archived from the original on May 6, 2011. Retrieved September 24, 2015.
  7. ^ "The 2013 IndustryWeek 1000". IndustryWeek. Penton Media. June 7, 2013. Archived from the original on May 28, 2012. Retrieved August 10, 2014.
  8. ^ "Hoya and Pentax to merge". Digital Photography Review. December 21, 2006. Retrieved May 16, 2015.
  9. ^ "Hoya株式会社" (PDF). Hoya Corp. Retrieved May 16, 2015.
  10. ^ "Pentax finally accept Hoya offer". Digital Photography Review. May 25, 2007. Retrieved September 24, 2015.
  11. ^ "Notice Regarding the Results of the Tender Offer for the Shares of PENTAX Corporation and Change of Subsidiary" (PDF). Hoya Corp. August 7, 2007. Retrieved August 7, 2007.
  12. ^ "Public Notice of Execution of Merger Agreement" (PDF). Hoya Corp. & PENTAX Corp. October 29, 2007. Retrieved October 31, 2007.
  13. ^ Lindemann, Roy (July 13, 2017). "HOYA's Memory Disk Division Acquires ReadSpeaker" (Press release). ReadSpeaker. Archived from the original on May 16, 2020. Retrieved May 16, 2020.
  14. ^ Squires, Robert I. (2018). Universal Design for Learning in Online Credit Recovery: Do Course Features Impact Achievement? (EdD dissertation). University of Montana. Archived from the original on April 25, 2020. Retrieved April 25, 2020.
  15. ^ Nicholson, Chris (October 11, 2006). "Talk to me, e-mail: Messages that can be heard - Technology - International Herald Tribune". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 16, 2020. Retrieved May 16, 2020.
  16. ^ Peraza, Juan; Quiñonez, Yadira; Lizarraga, Carmen; Ortega, José; Olivarría, Monica (2017). "Identification of visually impaired users for customizing web pages on the Internet". In Mejia, Jezreel; Muñoz, Mirna; Rocha, Álvaro; San Feliu, Tomas; Peña, Adriana (eds.). Trends and Applications in Software Engineering: Proceedings of CIMPS 2016. Cham: Springer Nature. p. 286. ISBN 978-3-319-48522-5. ISSN 2194-5357. Retrieved May 16, 2020.
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