is a Japanese company manufacturing optical products such as

photomasks A photomask is an opaque plate with holes or transparencies that allow light to shine through in a defined pattern. They are commonly used in photolithography and the production of integrated circuits (ICs or "chips") in particular. Masks are used ...

, photomask blanks and

hard disk drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with mag ...

platters, contact lenses and eyeglass lenses for the health-care market, medical photonics, lasers,

photographic filter In photography and cinematography, a filter is a camera accessory consisting of an optical filter that can be inserted into the optical path. The filter can be of a square or oblong shape and mounted in a holder accessory, or, more commonly, a ...

s, medical flexible endoscopy equipment, and software. Hoya Corporation is one of the Forbes Global 2000 Leading Companies and Industry Week 1000 Company.

History of Hoya-Pentax merger

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. However, Pentax management decided to not pursue the originally planned share swap, and other options for a merger were discussed. On May 25, the Pentax board of directors accepted Hoya's offer for a merger. On August 6, 2007, Hoya completed a friendly

takeover In business, a takeover is the purchase of one company (the ''target'') by another (the ''acquirer'' or ''bidder''). In the UK, the term refers to the acquisition of a public company whose shares are listed on a stock exchange, in contrast to ...

bid for Pentax and acquired 90.59% of the company. 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. 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

On July 13, 2017, it was announced that the HOYA had acquired ReadSpeaker. ReadSpeaker was founded in 1999 and headquartered in

Huis ter Heide, Utrecht Huis ter Heide is a village in the central Netherlands. It is located in the municipality of Zeist, Utrecht, about 2 km northeast of the centre of the town Zeist.''ANWB Topografische Atlas Nederland'', Topografische Dienst and ANWB, 2005. H ...

in the Netherlands at the time of the acquisition. ReadSpeaker is a

text-to-speech Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal langu ...

technology that allows users to highlight words that are being spoken, and users can save the speech in an

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

format. It has been used to transform websites to speech. The

International Herald Tribune The ''International Herald Tribune'' (''IHT'') was a daily English-language newspaper published in Paris, France for international English-speaking readers. It had the aim of becoming "the world's first global newspaper" and could fairly be said ...

employed the tool to turn into

podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosin ...

s the stories it publishes online. 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".

References

External links

* * Wiki collection of bibliographic works on Hoya Corporation {{Authority control Photography companies of Japan Electronics companies of Japan Manufacturing companies based in Tokyo Glassmaking companies of Japan Lens manufacturers Contact lenses Companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Technology companies established in 1941 1941 establishments in Japan Optics manufacturing companies Japanese brands Midori-kai Eyewear companies of Japan Medical technology companies of Japan

History of Hoya-Pentax merger

ReadSpeaker

See also

References

External links