Packard Bell

Packard Bell Electronics, Inc., was an American computer company independently active from 1986 to 1996, now a Dutch-registered computer manufacturing brand and subsidiary of Acer Inc. The company was originally founded in 1986, after Israeli-American investors bought the trademark rights to the Packard Bell Corporation from Teledyne. The investors wanted to name their newly formed personal computer manufacturing company producing discount computers in the North American markets. In the late 1990s, Packard Bell became a subsidiary of Japanese electronics conglomerate NEC, Packard Bell NEC. In 1999, NEC stopped its North American operations and focused squarely the division on the European market, where it continued to sell PC and laptop under the Packard Bell name. In 2006, NEC divested Packard Bell, and in 2008, the brand was acquired by the Taiwanese consumer electronic firm Acer, in the aftermath of their takeover of Gateway, Inc. The Packard Bell computer company was incorporated in Chatsworth, Los Angeles, California, in 1986 by Beny Alagem, Jason Barzilay, and Alex Sandel, three Israeli-born United States businessmen based in California. Packard Bell was previously the namesake of an American consumer electronics company founded in the 1920s, Packard Bell Electronics. The latter made a name for itself for its radios before branching out to television sets in the 1950s. In the 1960s, as with many American consumer electronics companies, Packard Bell encountered difficulty in the marketplace due to increasing competition from Japanese companies like Sony, Sanyo, and Panasonic. In 1968, Packard Bell was acquired by Teledyne Technologies, an electronics conglomerate. Teledyne let the Packard Bell trademark languish in the following years; by the mid-1970s, it was all but retired. Alagem, fascinated by Packard Bell's history as a once-beloved consumer electronics brand, bartered Teledyne for the rights to the trademark for just under $100,000. Alagem later found that brand recognition for Packard Bell was at 70 percent, among a random sampling of adults in the United States.