Fountain Valley-based D-Link Systems Inc. has partnered with Facebook Inc. to roll out a wireless router geared toward small-business owners.
The device, integrated with Facebook Wi-Fi, provides customers with an Internet hot spot that’s accessed through a retailer’s business page on the social network.
“It’s an easy way for customers to get Internet access and increases loyalty and analytics on the back end,” said Vice President of Marketing Daniel Kelley.
The product costs about $150.
It is D-Link’s first offering with Facebook, the world’s largest social network, with more than 1.3 billion monthly visitors.
“We’re definitely looking for a nice positive bump in awareness and sales for this particular item,” Kelley said, referring to an expected increase in D-Link brand awareness as a result of the deal.
Facebook won’t receive any commission for unit sales under the deal. The Menlo Park-based company is more concerned about building membership, which has grown to some 180 million people in the U.S., up about 22.6% from January 2011, according to Washington, D.C.-based iStrategyLabs, a digital media company.
Negotiations between Facebook and D-Link, the North American unit of D-Link Corp. in Taiwan, started about a year ago, but challenges regarding product development negated an earlier release.
“It took awhile to get the product and user experience where we wanted it to be,” Kelley said.
D-Link’s parent has about $1 billion in annual sales and doesn’t break down revenue by region.
State of Solid-State Drives
Western Digital Corp. rival Seagate Technology Inc. shook up the storage industry late last month when it announced plans to buy Avago Technologies Ltd.’s flash storage and Accelerated Solutions Division for $450 million.
The buy signaled the Cupertino-based company aims to make a dent in the growing NAND and solid-state drive segments. NAND is a component in memory cards, flash drives, cameras, laptops and other products for general storage and data transfer. SSDs use chips instead of spinning disks to store data and are expected to gradually replace hard disk drives in coming years.
Seagate projects the buy will generate about $150 million in revenue and profits of between $30 million and $40 million in its fiscal year ending in June.
Irvine-based Western Digital, the world largest disk drive maker in units sold and revenue, is an emerging player in the higher-margin SSD market. It bolstered its standing last year by acquiring a trio of SSD makers, including Lincoln, Mass.-based VeloBit Inc. on undisclosed terms. It also paid $340 million for Santa Ana-based sTec Inc. and $685 million for Virident Systems Inc. in Milpitas.
Chief Entrepreneur?
Phu Hoang, chief executive of Rancho Santa Margarita-based storage device maker Virtium Technology, was among the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2014 Award winners in Orange County. Hoang was the award recipient in the Enterprise Solutions category.
The awards recognize entrepreneurs who demonstrate excellence and success in innovation, financial performance, and personal commitment to their businesses and communities.
A panel of independent judges chose Hoang from nearly 80 applicants. Award winners were announced June 4 at the St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort in Dana Point.Â
Hoang was among five executives honored last year at the Business Journal’s 12th annual Excellence in Entrepreneurship Awards.
He fled Vietnam in 1984 amid a flurry of bullets that whizzed by the boat he captained carrying 66 passengers. It reached Indonesia after nine days at sea. He moved to Orange County in 1991 for a job as a computer engineer designing memory and storage and held several jobs before starting the consultancy that grew into Virtium, which makes solid-state drives geared toward telecoms and the medical, transportation, media, and automated-manufacturing sectors.
