Hayes Communications
Hayes Communications was a U.S-based manufacturer of modems. Co-founded by Dennis Hayes and Dale Heatherington, it brought the first modem for home and personal computers to market, and the Hayes command set that controlled its modems became an industry standard still in use today. During the 1980s and 1990s, Hayes was a premium brand with a reputation for high compatibility and reliability. At its peak, its market share was about 50 percent, and computer magazines encouraged their readers to shy away from any modem that was not Hayes-compatible. However, Hayes was not as fast as some other manufacturers to release modems that ran faster than 2400 bits per second, which opened the door for U.S. Robotics to fill the void and also take premium status. Additionally, numerous manufacturers undercut Hayes' prices. Hayes eventually purchased two of these competitors, Practical Peripherals and Cardinal, in order to compete with companies such as Zoom Telephonics. Heatherington retired at age 36, taking $20 million for his share in the company. As modems became more of a commodity and margins dropped, Hayes, like U.S. Robotics, sought to diversify. Unlike USR, its other products failed. By the mid-1990s, many of Hayes' products used off-the-shelf chipsets and had little to distinguish them from Hayes' competitors. Hayes went bankrupt in 1998 and its assets were liquidated. The brand name was purchased and revived by onetime rival Zoom in July 1999.
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