Zenith Data Systems
 | |
 Top: Logo used from 1990 to 1996 Bottom: Site of former headquarters in Buffalo Grove, Illinois, from 1990 to 1996 | |
| Type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer |
| Founded | October 1979 in St. Joseph, Michigan, United States |
| Defunct | February 1996 |
| Fate | Acquired by Groupe Bull in 1989; later acquired by Packard Bell NEC in 1996; brand discontinued in 1999 |
| Headquarters | , United States (1990–1996) |
| Products | Computer systems |
| Revenue | US$1.4 billion (1988, peak) |
Number of employees | 3,800 (1990, peak) |
| Parent |
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Zenith Data Systems Corporation (ZDS) was an American computer systems manufacturing company active from 1979 to 1996. It was originally a division of the Zenith Radio Company (later Zenith Electronics), after that company purchased the Heath Company and its Heathkit line of electronic kits and kit microcomputers, from Schlumberger in October 1979. ZDS originally operated from Heath's own headquarters in St. Joseph, Michigan. By the time Zenith acquired Heathkit, the Heathkit H8 kit computer already had an installed customer base of scientific engineers and computing enthusiasts. ZDS's first offerings were preassembled versions of existing Heathkit computers, but within a few years, the company began selling its own designs including the Zenith Z-100, a hybrid 8085- and 8088-based computer capable of running both CP/M and MS-DOS.
ZDS largely avoided the retail consumer market, instead focusing on selling directly to businesses, educational institutions, and government agencies. By the late 1980s, the company won several lucrative government contracts worth several hundreds of millions of dollars combined, including a US$242-million contract with the United States Department of Defense, the largest such computer-related government contract up to that date. In 1986 the company made headlines when it beat out IBM for a contract with the Internal Revenue Service to supply a portable computer. By the mid-1980s ZDS's profits offset losses in Zenith's television sales. Its Zenith SupersPort laptop was released in 1988 to high demand, composing a quarter of the entire American laptop market that year. The company reached a peak in terms of revenue in 1988, generating US$1.4 billion that year. The following year saw ZDS floundering in multiple ways, including a cancelled contract with the United States Navy and a failed attempt to increase consumer desktop sales. In late 1989, ZDS was purchased by Groupe Bull of France for between $511 million and $635 million.
Following the acquisition, ZDS moved from Michigan to Buffalo Grove, Illinois. In 1991, Enrico Pesatori took over ZDS and attempted to repair relations with dealers while diversifying the product lineup and modes of sales. ZDS slowly recovered during the early 1990s, winning a lucrative contract with the Pentagon in 1993. Pesatori was replaced that year with Jacques Noels of Nokia, who further diversified the company's lineup. ZDS's revenue steadily grew in the North American and European markets in the beginning of 1994. The company was acquired by Packard Bell in February 1996, in a three-way deal which saw Groupe Bull and Japanese electronics conglomerate NEC increasing their existing stakes in Packard Bell. Later, NEC announced that it would acquire Packard Bell, merging it with NEC's global personal computer operations. ZDS continued as a brand of computer systems under the resulting merger, Packard Bell NEC, from 1996 until 1999, when Packard Bell NEC announced that it would withdraw from the American computer market.