12:13
 | |
 Corel headquarters in Ottawa | |
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software Programming |
| Founded | 1985 |
| Founder | Michael Cowpland |
| Headquarters | Ottawa, Ontario, Canada |
Key people | Christa Quarles (CEO) Brad Jewett (CFO) Prasannaa Ganesan (COO) Rene Barreda (CPO)(CLO) |
| Products | WordPerfect CorelDRAW WinZip PaintShop Pro AfterShot Pro WinDVD Painter MindManager |
| Revenue |  268.2 million USD (2008)[1] |
| Owner | Kohlberg Kravis Roberts |
Number of employees | < 500 (2015) |
| Subsidiaries | Roxio Parallels |
| Website | corel |
Corel Corporation (/kəˈrɛl/ kə-REL;[2] from the abbreviation "Cowpland Research Laboratory") is a Canadian software company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, specializing in graphics processing. It is known for producing software titles such as CorelDRAW, and for acquiring AfterShot Pro, PaintShop Pro, Painter, Video Studio and WordPerfect.
Corel was founded by Michael Cowpland in 1985 as a research laboratory. Michael Cowpland was CEO of Mitel. Mitel needed writing and creative design programs to enhance the company product line. Corel products were born. Additional products were added. The company had great success early in the high-tech boom of the 1990s and early 2000s with the product CorelDRAW, and became, for a time, the biggest software company in Canada. In 1996 it acquired Novell WordPerfect and started competing with the thought of being "Pepsi to Microsoft's Coke"[3] as Microsoft Word was the top-used word processing software at the time. Corel was in a difficult position as Microsoft pushed pre-loaded copies of its software onto new computers. This mainly consisted of Microsoft Works office applications, but a variant called Works Suite also bundled the Microsoft Word software.
The company held the naming rights to the home arena for the NHL's Ottawa Senators from February 1996 until January 2006 as the "Corel Centre", a venue currently known as the Canadian Tire Centre.[4]
In 1996 Corel created a Full motion video game called Mode.[5]
In 1997 Corel sold its Corel ChemLab studio and its "CD Home Collection" consisting of over 60 multimedia titles to Hoffmann + Associates, a Toronto-based company. As part of the deal, Corel acquired a minority interest in Hoffmann + Associates and received royalties.[6]
In August 2000 Cowpland was accused of insider trading and left. A new board of directors was then appointed and Derek Burney Jr., announced that the product line would be split into several brands—DeepWhite, ProCreate, and Corel. However, these plans were scrapped, and only the Corel brand remained. Corel acquired the graphics software company Micrografx in late 2001.[citation needed]
In August 2003, Corel was bought out by the private equity firm Vector Capital for $1.05 a share (slightly more than the cash in the company).[citation needed] The company was voluntarily delisted from the NASDAQ and Toronto Stock Exchanges. Some U.S. shareholders alleged the management benefited from the buyout personally while the buyout price was too low. A lawsuit was filed in the U.S. to stop the buyout and was unsuccessful.
In March 2005 Corel announced that the United States Justice Department purchased 50,000 licenses of WordPerfect (adding to the worldwide user base of 20 million) and that WordPerfect was adding 4 million new users per year thanks to bundling deals with Dell.[7] Corel contended that WordPerfect was the only viable alternative to Microsoft Office, with sales 70 times more than Lotus' SmartSuite. On April 26, 2006, Corel completed its return to the public market with an initial public offering on NASDAQ,[8] the same day finalizing the acquisition of WinZip, an archiving software title.
On December 12, 2006, Corel completed its acquisitions of InterVideo and Ulead. The InterVideo acquisition was valued at around $196 million.[9] In May 2008, CEO David Dobson announced that he was leaving the company to take a senior strategy role at Pitney Bowes.[10] Dobson was replaced on May 8 by former Symantec executive Kris Hagerman.[11] In November 2009, it was announced that Vector Capital would be purchasing the remaining shares of common stock in Corel Corporation.[12] Upon completion, this made Corel once again privately owned.[13] On January 29, 2010, the shareholders of Corel approved its previously announced stock consolidation, completing the transfer to Corel Holdings, L.P., a limited partnership controlled by an affiliate of Vector Capital.[14]
In January 2012, Corel acquired Roxio from Rovi Corporation for an undisclosed amount.[15] Subsequently on July 2, 2012, Corel announced its acquisition of Pinnacle Systems, a developer of consumer-oriented video editing products (such as the Pinnacle Studio series) owned by Avid.[16]
Having suffered layoffs in 2003 and 2008,[17] Corel began a near yearly culture of restructuring beginning in 2010, when in the latter part of that year the company's finance department was restructured and moved to their Taipei office, resulting in significant layoffs at its Ottawa HQ. Restructuring in 2012[18] resulted in more layoffs. In December 2013, the company's restructuring resulted in the layoffs of the Taipei locations engineering and quality assurance team. Corel's Taipei office was the core development centre of PaintShop Pro and VideoStudio, one of the company's most well-known photo- and video-editing bundles. The 2013 restructuring led to a partial handover of product development to outsourced companies, resulting in more rapid, low-cost development across its product lines. The company continued with layoffs in 2014 and once again at the beginning of 2015 with the change of the company's CEO to Patrick Nichols, previously the head of Corel's WinZip business unit.
In August 2016, Corel announced the acquisition of the Mindjet MindManager business from Spigit.[19]
In June 2018, Corel announced the acquisition of Gravit GmbH.[20]
In December 2018, Corel announced the acquisition of Parallels.[21]
On July 3, 2019, Corel was acquired by KKR.[22]
In late September 2020, Christa Quarles was named the CEO of the company.[23]
The annual Corel World Design Contest first ran from 1990 through 1998. The competition intended to recognize and encourage an international community of graphic artists from over 50,000,000 registered Corel users. Two finalists for each of the eight categories were awarded a trip to Ottawa, Canada to participate in the Corel World Design Contest gala and awards ceremony. The finalists from each of the eight categories received an issue of the "Corel Crystal Award". The collection of artworks were later released in a catalogue with bundled CD, under the name of "Corel Artshow". The contest was reinitiated in 2009 on the 20th Anniversary of CorelDRAW's launch and now runs every two years. The 2013 and 2015 contests each had a prize pool with a total value of USD100,000.
Logo for Corel's short-lived ProCreate brand
Corel's current logo, the hot air balloon
Corel's second logo
Corel's third logo, launched February 2001
By: Wikipedia.org
Edited: 2021-06-18 18:31:09
Source: Wikipedia.org
