Foxit

Foxit Software was founded in 2001 by Eugene Y. Xiong (Chinese: 熊雨前), 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 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 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.

Foxit Reader

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 (or later), MacOS and older versions of Linux.

The Foxit installer was bundled with potentially unwanted programs like the Ask Toolbar and OpenCandy which installed the browser-hijacking malware Conduit.

In July 2014, the Internet Storm Center reported that the mobile version for iPhone was transmitting unencrypted telemetry and other data to remote servers located in China despite users attempting to opt out of such data collection.

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.