Corel Corporation from the abbreviation (" Cowpland Research Laboratory") is a software company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, that specializes in graphics processing. It is known for producing software titles such as CorelDRAW, for having acquired Jasc Software, developers of Paint Shop Pro, in Oct 2004,
History
Corel was founded by
Michael Cowpland in 1985, as a research laboratory. The company had great success early in the high-tech boom of the
nineties with the product
CorelDraw (being one of the three killer apps of
OS/2), 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" as Microsoft Word was the top-used word processing software at the time. Corel's job was made significantly more difficult due to Microsoft's strategy to push
pre-loaded copies of Word onto new computers.
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 brandsDeepWhite, ProCreate, and Corel. However, these plans would be scrapped, and only the Corel brand would remain. Corel acquired the graphics software company Micrografx in late 2001.
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). The company was voluntarily delisted from the NASDAQ and . 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 Computer. Corel contends that WordPerfect is 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,[ Corel IPO stumbles out of the gate ] the same day finalizing the acquisition of WinZip, a well-known archiving software title.
On December 12, 2006, Corel completed its acquisitions of InterVideo and Ulead. The InterVideo acquisition was valued at around $196 million.[ Corel's letter to customers on the InterVideo Ulead acquisition] In May 2008, CEO David Dobson announced that he was leaving the company to take a senior strategy role at Pitney Bowes. Dobson was replaced on May 8 by former Symantec executive Kris Hagerman. In November 2009, it was announced that Vector Capital would be purchasing the remaining shares of common stock in Corel Corporation. Upon completion, Corel will once again be privately owned.[ Corel Holdings Announces Successful Tender Offer and Commencement of Subsequent Offering Period, URL accessed on 26 November 2009]
On January 29, 2010, the shareholders of Corel approved its previously announced stock consolidation. The consolidation represented the second and final step in the acquisition of Corel by Corel Holdings, L.P., a limited partnership controlled by an affiliate of Vector Capital. Following approval of the Consolidation, Corel filed articles of amendment to effect the consolidation with the result that Corel is now wholly owned by Corel Holdings.[ Shareholders Approve Consolidation of Corel Corporation Shares] In January 2012, Corel acquired Roxio from Rovi Corporation for an undisclosed amount.
Products
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Corel Designer — Formerly Micrografx Designer, professional technical illustration software.
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Corel Digital Studio — a set of four applications: PaintShop Photo Express (a light version of Paint Shop Pro), VideoStudio Express (video-editing software), DVD Factory (DVD burning and converting software), WinDVD (DVD player software).
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CorelDRAW — A vector graphics editor.
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Corel Graphics Suite — Combination of CorelDRAW, PhotoPaint, and Capture.
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Corel Home Office — A word processor
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Corel KnockOut — Professional image masking plug-in.
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Corel Paint it! touch — Drawing and painting software created specifically for the Windows 7 touchscreen PCs.
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Corel Painter — a program that emulates natural media — paint, crayons, brushes etc. (formerly Fractal Painter).
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Corel Photo Album — A sophisticated program for organizing digital photographs, inherited from Jasc Software.
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Corel Photo-Paint — A bitmap graphics program comparable to Adobe Photoshop, bundled with the CorelDRAW Graphics Suite.
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Corel SnapFire — A digital photo management suite, positioned to compete with Google's Picasa offering.
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Corel Ventura — Desktop publishing software that had a large and loyal following for its DOS version when Corel acquired it in the early 1990s. It was briefly revived in 2002.
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Corel Linux OS — One of the first GUI based distributions of Linux incorporating an automatic installation program in 1999.
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Corel AfterShot — Photo management software
Acquired Products
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Paint Shop Pro — In October 2004, Corel purchased Jasc Software, developer of this budget-priced bitmap graphics editing program.
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Quattro Pro — A spreadsheet program acquired from Borland and bundled with WordPerfect Office.
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VideoStudio — A digital video editing program originally developed by Ulead Systems which remains a distribution of Ulead Systems. The software was rebranded Corel VideoStudio since Corel acquired Ulead and it became a working division of Corel.
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WordPerfect — A word processing program acquired from Novell, and originally produced by Satellite Software International.
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Bryce - Software for creating 3d landscapes. Sold in 2004 to DAZ Productions.
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Click and Create - A game development tool created by Clickteam that was also sold as The Games Factory. Click and Create 2 was sold to IMSI who released it as Multimedia Fusion.
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Paradox — A relational database acquired from Borland and bundled with WordPerfect Office Professional Edition.
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WinZip — A file archiver and compressor, acquired in 2006 from Corel's purchase of WinZip Computing.
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XMetaL - An XML editor acquired in the takeover of SoftQuad in 2001 and then sold to Blast Radius in 2004.
Corel World Design Contest
The annual Corel World Design Contest ran from 1990 through 1998 and was considered to be one of the most prestigious graphic design contests, worldwide. 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".
See also
External links
