Other World Computing

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Other World Computing, Inc.

Company type	Private company
Founded	1988; 36 years ago (1988)
Headquarters	Woodstock, Illinois
Key people	Larry O'Connor, Founder and CEO
Website	www.owcdigital.com

Other World Computing (OWC), founded in 1988, is an American computer hardware and software company, with an online store for upgrading Mac, Windows and accessories.

At age 14, Larry O'Connor began LRO Enterprises, a printer ribbon reinking business, in his family's barn.^[1]

A year later, LRO Enterprises reorganized into LRO Computer Sales and began selling computer memory chips via America Online. The company moved into its first facility in Woodstock, Illinois, and hired its first employees.^[2]

1992 - LRO Computer Sales shifted focus to computers by offering hard drives to its customers.

1993 - LRO Computer Sales was incorporated in the state of Illinois under the name New Concepts Development Corporation (NCDC). The company then moved into a 2,500-square-foot office space, which expanded to about 6,500 square feet over the next eight years.

1994 - O'Connor renamed LRO Computers Sales "Other World Computing" (OWC), which operates doing business as NCDC.^[2] OWC shipped its first OWC-branded acceleration products in 1995 followed by the introduction of the Mercury G3 ZIF upgrade line in 1999.

OWC expanded and introduced the Mercury Classic Elite line of external storage and offered an iPod case. OWC announced a portable FireWire drive and a FireWire/USB combination product in 2003.^[2]

Later on, OWC launched www.fastermac.net, a Macintosh-only Internet access service that provided dial-up access throughout the U.S. specifically for Macintosh computer users in 2003.^[2]

2004 - The company also began offering an iPod battery replacement program and introduced the miniStack line of drives to complement Apple's Mac mini.

2006 - OWC introduced the first Dual-HD external FireWire drive RAID available up to 1.5 TB and became the first third-party company with memory modules and upgrade kits for the Intel-based Mac Pro. It met Apple specifications and was the first to introduce a Quad Interface external hard drive combining FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB 2.0, and eSATA connection options in one product – the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Quad Interface.^[2]

2007 - OWC announced it would be the US distributor of the Axiotron Modbook.^[3] OWC also introduced the OWC Mercury Rack Pro line and the OWC Blu-ray internal and external drives. .^[2]

2008 - OWC moved into a new 37,000-square-foot (3,400 m²) corporate headquarters designed to platinum Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards.^[4]

2009 - OWC expanded its storage line with the OWC Mercury Elite Pro Qx2, a desktop hardware RAID storage product. Later that year a Vestas V39-500 kW wind turbine started generating more electricity than OWC needed to run the facility.^[5] OWC said it was the first technology manufacturer/distributor in the U.S. to become totally on-site wind powered.^[6]

Other World Computing was on the Inc. magazine 5000 "Fastest-Growing Privately Owned Companies" and "Computer and Electronics Top 100" list from 2007 through 2013.^[7]

2010 - OWC announced the Mercury Extreme SSD line of 2.5" SATA solid state drives. The OWC Data Doubler, for adding a second internal drive to MacBook, MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and iMac computers, was also introduced, as was the OWC Slim eSATA ExpressCard Adapter, which adds an eSATA port to Mac and PC notebooks.^[2]

2011 - Sales revenue was reported as $88.3 million, with about 137 employees.^[8]

2019 - OWC acquired fellow external computer storage products and accessories manufacturer Akitio.^[9]

OWC markets upgrade kits for Apple products. The Data-Doubler installation kit^[10] allows customers to add a second 2.5" SATA hard disk drive or solid state drive to the optical drive bay of a Mac mini, MacBook, MacBook Pro or an iMac.^[11] The optical drive can then be repurposed as an external drive. OWC designs and manufactures solid state drives. MaxRAM is a line of memory upgrades for Apple products.

OWC provide external drives, Network Attached Storage (NAS), internal drives, docks and adaptors, memory cards and memory card readers, PCIe expansion, a range of software and apps designed for data workflow, toolkits and accessories, and memory modules.^[12]