Fujian Foxit Software Development Joint Stock Co., Ltd. (), also known as Foxit Software (),
is a
software developer based in
Fuzhou, China, with subsidiaries in the United States, Europe, Japan, and Australia,
that develops
Portable Document Format
Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating syste ...
(PDF) software and tools used to create, edit, eSign, and secure files and digital documents. It also has other offices in
Fuzhou,
Beijing
}
Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...
,
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
,
South Yarra
South Yarra is an inner-city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 4 km south-east of Melbourne's Melbourne central business district, Central Business District, located within the Cities of City of Melbourne, Melbourne and City of Sto ...
(Melbourne),
Japan, Taiwan, Korea, France, North Macedonia, and Slovakia.
As of 2016, there were about 425 million Foxit users of Foxit's software, with sales to more than 100,000 customers in 200 countries.
Foxit Software was named #2 Best PDF Editor Software of 2022" by ComHQ.
History
Foxit Software was founded in 2001
by Eugene Y. Xiong (Chinese: ), a Chinese national with permanent residence in the United States,
to develop similar PDF software products to those from
Adobe Systems and other PDF vendors, and offer them at lower prices.
In 2009, Foxit Software Company incorporated as Foxit Corporation.
In December 2015, Foxit went public on the Chinese over-the-counter market
NEEQ. Before 2019,
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...
was an early investor and substantial shareholder of Foxit, once owning 12.38% of the latter's shares, before divesting in 2019 to make Foxit eligible for a simplified IPO process for domestic companies in China.
In June 2020, Foxit Software received permission to list in the
Shanghai Stock Exchange STAR Market (the Sci-Tech Innovation Board).
According to Foxit's pre-
IPO
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...
disclosures, it seeks to raise RMB 409 million (approximately USD 49 million).
As a technology company, Foxit is eligible to receive a reduced tax rate of 15% in China.
It also received RMB 13 million of Chinese government subsidies in 2019.
As of 2019, most of Foxit's software development has been taking place within China, while over 90% of its revenue was earned outside of China, in markets such as the United States, Europe, Japan and Australia.
The vast majority of its net profit is sourced from the United States.
It listed
Adobe Inc. as its biggest competitor.
Acquisitions
Foxit has grown organically and through several acquisitions.
Standards involvement
Foxit has contributed to the evolution of
ISO 32000 and
ISO 19005 standards.
Products
Foxit Reader
The company's first product,
Foxit Reader
Foxit PDF Reader (formerly Foxit Reader) is a multilingual freemium PDF (Portable Document Format) tool that can create, view, edit, digitally sign, and print PDF files. Foxit Reader is developed by Fuzhou, China-based Foxit Software. Early ver ...
, was released in 2004.
It provides a way to view, create and sign PDF files, and add annotations to them. Foxit Reader 3.0 offers comparable functionality to Adobe Reader. Older versions were notable for their speed and small file sizes. Foxit released version 8.0 in 2016.
The software is pre-installed on Windows PCs from HP, Acer, and ASUS. Foxit released version 9.0 in 2017. The software is available as a freeware download for PCs running Windows 7 (or later),
MacOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...
and older versions of
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...
.
Foxit PhantomPDF
Foxit PhantomPDF, a multi-feature PDF editor, was released in 2008. Foxit PhantomPDF has an interface that holds many advanced, PDF editing and security features. Foxit released version 8.0 in 2016.
The software has been renamed from Foxit PhantomPDF to Foxit PDF Editor with the release of Foxit PDF Editor 11.0.0.49893 dated May 25, 2021.
ConnectedPDF
ConnectedPDF, released in 2016, extends the traditional portable document format by associating a unique identifier with each PDF, thereby enabling capabilities such as file update notifications, document locating and tracking, shared and synchronized review and mark-up, and remote digital rights management and protection.
ConnectedPDF is not a stand-alone product. Functionality is embedded within some of Foxit’s PDF software products. ConnectedPDF is included in the latest releases of Foxit PhantomPDF (version ≥8), Foxit Reader (version ≥8) and Foxit MobilePDF (version ≥5).
PDF Compressor
Foxit PDF Compressor converts scanned documents to PDF or PDF/A, compresses them and uses integrated OCR technology to make them fully text searchable.
Rendition Server
Foxit Rendition Server is an on-premises or cloud web service for centralized document conversion to PDF and PDF/A. It enables the construction of a transformation infrastructure which can be addressed by programs and environments through a web service interface.
OEM relationships
The company has developed
original equipment manufacturer
An original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is generally perceived as a company that produces non-aftermarket parts and equipment that may be marketed by another manufacturer. It is a common industry term recognized and used by many professional or ...
relationships with a number of businesses. Foxit’s technology is included in
Amazon Kindle,
Gmail
Gmail is a free email service provided by Google. As of 2019, it had 1.5 billion active users worldwide. A user typically accesses Gmail in a web browser or the official mobile app. Google also supports the use of email clients via the POP and ...
and
Google Chrome. The company has also developed the rendering engine for Google's open-source PDFium project.
SDKs
Foxit also provides a variety of PDF
software development kit
A software development kit (SDK) is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, debugger and sometimes a software framework. They are normally specific ...
s (SDKs) for developers wanting to create custom PDF applications.
Industry association memberships
Foxit Software is an active member of the
PDF Association
The PDF Association promotes the adoption and use of International Standards related to PDF technology by assisting enterprise content management (ECM), document management system (DMS) and advanced PDF users with the implementation of PDF techn ...
. LuraTech, acquired by Foxit in 2015, was a founding member of the PDF Association. Carsten Heiermann, founder and CEO of the LuraTech group, is member of the association’s board. Thomas Zellmann, who joined LuraTech in 2001, is the association’s Managing Director.
References
{{reflist
External links
Foxit Software
Software companies established in 2001
Chinese companies established in 2001
Software companies of China
PDF software
PDF readers