Zoran Corporation was a multinational digital technology company, founded in 1983 and headquartered in Silicon Valley, that was predominantly focused on designing and selling SoC (System on a Chip) integrated circuits for consumer electronics applications. The name Zoran is derived from the Hebrew word for silicon. Zoran was incorporated in the state of Delaware and had offices in Canada, China, England, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the US. Zoran had strong ties with Israel, with a strong R&D presence and being the beneficiary of incentives from organizations such as Israel's Ministry of Industry and Trade.
After an early focus on filter and signal processors for military, industrial and medical applications, Zoran started focusing on data compression products for emerging multimedia applications and became better known in the late 1990s as a supplier of Motion JPEG codec chips used on PC add-in cards for video capture and video editing applications. After the turn of the millennium, sales increased substantially as Zoran became a leading provider of chips for DVD players, which it continued to be until about 2007, covering a period during which the production volume of DVD players increased strongly and the semiconductor value in this segment reached its peak. Starting from 2005, Zoran also supplied chips for a substantial portion of the worldwide production of digital cameras. Around 2008 and 2009, Zoran was successful as a supplier of cost-effective integrated chips for LCD TVs supporting the ATSC standards used for HDTV broadcast in the US.
In 2011, Zoran merged with UK-based CSR and is now represented by the CSR brand and stock. After the merger, CSR executed substantial layoffs of former Zoran employees.
Aug 13, 2015 - Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM) announced that its indirect, wholly-owned subsidiary, Qualcomm Global Trading Pte. Ltd, has completed its acquisition of CSR plc (CSR), a leading fabless provider of end-to-end semiconductor and software solutions for the Internet of Everything (IoE).
