Foxit Software, Inc., develops Portable Document Format software and tools used to create, edit, sign, and secure files and digital documents. The company's headquarters is in Fremont, California, with offices in Berlin, Beijing, Fuzhou, South Yarra, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and France. There are about 425 million Foxit users of Foxit's software, with sales to more than 100,000 customers in 200 countries.
History
Foxit Software was founded in 2001 by Eugene Y. Xiong 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 2015, Foxit went public on the NEEQ.
Standards involvement
Foxit has contributed to the evolution of the ISO 32000 standard and is currently active in new PDF standard initiatives. The company also played a role in development of the ISO 19005 standard, also known as PDF/A, for long term archiving of documents.
The company’s first product, Foxit Reader, 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, MacOS and Linux.
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.
ConnectedPDF
Foxit Software released ConnectedPDF in 2016. ConnectedPDF 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, Foxit Reader and Foxit MobilePDF.
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 powerful transformation infrastructure which can be addressed by a wide range of programs and environments through a web service interface.
Foxit Software is an active member of the PDF Association. 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.
