InfoGear Technology

About InfoGear Technology

InfoGear Technology Corporation, established in May 1995, carved a niche in the early internet era by developing internet appliances. The company's genesis traces back to an internal innovation project, codenamed "Project Mercury," at National Semiconductor. This project, spearheaded by engineers Chaim Bendelac, Reuven Marko, and Yuval Shahar, aimed to create a device that merged telephone functions with internet browsing. The concept caught the eye of technology consultant Bob Ackerman, who recognized its potential and worked to spin the project out into a standalone company.

InfoGear's flagship product, released in 1998, was an internet appliance famously named the "iPhone". This device, preceding Apple's iconic smartphone by nearly a decade, was a desktop telephone featuring a 7-inch black-and-white LCD touchscreen, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and an embedded web browser and email client. It was designed for simplicity, allowing users to make calls, browse the web, and check emails. Unique features for its time included voicemail transcription, where messages appeared as on-screen text, and the ability to tap a phone number on a webpage to dial it automatically. The business model involved selling the hardware, initially priced at $499, coupled with a required monthly internet service subscription of around $20.

The company's strategy relied on a server-side infrastructure, which performed a significant portion of the processing, a model that can be seen as an early form of cloud computing. In 1997, InfoGear partnered with CIDCO systems, briefly branding the device as the CIDCO iPhone. Under the leadership of CEO Ed Cluss, who took the helm in 1997, the company introduced a second-generation model and sold approximately 100,000 units in total. The firm's trajectory culminated in a strategic acquisition by Cisco Systems. On March 16, 2000, Cisco announced a definitive agreement to acquire the privately-held InfoGear for approximately $301 million in stock, integrating its 74 employees and technology to bolster Cisco's solutions for delivering and managing services to information appliances. The acquisition was completed on June 5, 2000, marking the end of InfoGear as an independent entity.