The Hewlett-Packard Company is an American global information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. It develops and provides a wide variety of hardware components as well as software and related services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including customers in the government, health and education sectors. The company was founded in a one-car garage in Palo Alto by William "Bill" Redington Hewlett and David "Dave" Packard starting with a line of electronic test equipment. HP was the world's leading PC manufacturer from 2007 to Q2 2013, after which Lenovo remained ranked ahead of HP. It specializes in developing and manufacturing computing, data storage, and networking hardware, designing software and delivering services. Major product lines include personal computing devices, enterprise and industry standard servers, related storage devices, networking products, software and a diverse range of printers and other imaging products. HP markets its products to households, small- to medium-sized businesses and enterprises directly as well as via online distribution, consumer-electronics and office-supply retailers, software partners and major technology vendors. HP also has services and consulting business around its products and partner products.
The Ricoh Company, Ltd. is a Japanese multinational imaging and electronics company. It was founded by the RIKEN zaibatsu on 6 February 1936 as Riken Sensitized Paper. Ricoh's headquarters are located in Ricoh Building in Ch, Tokyo. Ricoh produces electronic products, primarily cameras and office equipment such as printers, photocopiers, fax machines, offers Software as a Service document management solutions such as DocumentMall, document solutions such as GlobalScan, Print&Share and also offers Projectors. In the late 1990s through early 2000s, the company grew to become the largest copier manufacturer in the world. During this time, Ricoh acquired Savin, Gestetner, Lanier, Rex-Rotary, Monroe, Nashuatec, IKON and most recently IBM Printing Systems Division / Infoprint Solutions Company. Although the Monroe brand was discontinued, products continue to be marketed worldwide under the remaining brand names. In 2006, Ricoh acquired the European operations of Danka for $210 million. These operations continue as a stand-alone business unit, under the Infotec brand.
