Description
Axon Enterprise is an American Scottsdale, Arizona-based company which develops technology and weapons products for military, law enforcement and civilians.
Its initial product and former namesake is the Taser, a line of electroshock weapons. The company has since diversified into technology products for military and law enforcement, including a line of body cameras and Evidence.com, a cloud-based digital evidence platform. As of 2017, body cameras and associated services comprise a quarter of Axon's overall business.
History
In 1969, NASA researcher Jack Cover began to develop a non-lethal electric weapon to help police officers control suspects, as an alternative to firearms. By 1974, Cover had completed the device, which he named the "Tom Swift Electric Rifle" (TSER), referencing the 1911 novel Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle; to make it easier to pronounce as a word, Cover later added an "A" to the acronym to form "TASER". The Taser Public Defender used gunpowder as its propellant, which led the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to classify it as a firearm in 1976, a decision that limited sales. In 1980, the Los Angeles Police Department conducted a successful field test of an improved version (having reconsidered its earlier rejections of the technology after the shooting of Eula Love), but the device remained commercially unsuccessful and Cover's company, Taser Systems Inc., collapsed.
In 1993, Rick and Tom Smith formed AIR TASER, Inc. to, with Cover, design a version of the device that would use compressed nitrogen instead of gunpowder as a propellant. During development, the company faced competition from another vendor, Tasertron, whose product had become associated with its alleged ineffectiveness during the police confrontation of Rodney King.
After nearly going bankrupt marketing other products such as an electroshock-based anti-theft system for automobiles known as "Auto Taser", the company, later renamed TASER International, introduced its TASER M26 weapon in 1999. With a $6.8 million deficit in 2001, TASER International took steps to improve sales by offering to pay police officers to train others on how to use their products; this marketing technique helped improve the company's market share, reaching $24.5 million in net sales by 2003, and nearly $68 million in 2004. In May 2001, they filed for an initial public offering and began trading on NASDAQ under the stock symbol TASR.[citation needed]
The company also took significant action against competitors, having acquired the aforementioned Tasertron, and aggressively defending its patents. Patent lawsuits by TASER International led to the shutdown of both Stinger Systems and its successor company, Karbon Arms; both companies were founded by Robert Gruder. Despite the controversies that have centered around the products (including deaths attributed to taser usage), the company maintained its dominant market position.
Shift towards bodycams
In 2005, TASER International began to offer an accessory for its taser products, TASER Cam, which adds a grip-mounted camera that is activated after the safety is disengaged, to its battery pack. By October 2010, at least 45,000 TASER Cams had been sold.
In 2008, the company unveiled its first body camera, the Axon Pro. It was designed to be head-mounted, and upload footage for online storage on a web-based service known as Evidence.com. TASER's CEO Rick Smith explained that the products were designed to "help provide revolutionary digital evidence collection, storage and retrieval for law enforcement". The company piloted Axon Pro in various small cities and towns.[16] In 2009, after prosecutor Daniel Shue exonerated Fort Smith police officer Brandon Davis based on footage from an Axon Pro camera, both Davis and Shue began to provide testimonials for the product in its marketing.
Especially in the wake of the Michael Brown shooting, the company's body camera business saw significant growth. Smith argued that the company was "not just about weapons, but about providing transparency and solving related data problems." In April 2013, the Rialto Police Department released the results of a 12-month study on the impact of on-officer video using Axon Flex cameras. The study found an 88% drop in complaints filed against officers and nearly a 60% reduction in officer use-of-force incidents.
TASER opened an office in Seattle in 2013, and an international office in Amsterdam, Netherlands in May 2014. In June 2015, the company announced the formation of a new Seattle-based division known as Axon, which would encompass the company's technology businesses, including body cameras, digital evidence management, and analytics. Rick Smith explained that the branch was inspired by Microsoft's use of the Xbox brand to branch into entertainment businesses, stating that "Axon was the name that we used for selling cameras historically, but we realized that brand had the room to grow and encompass all of our connected technologies." The Taser brand would still be used for the company's weapons products.
On April 5, 2017, TASER announced that it had rebranded as Axon to reflect its expanded business. The company also announced an intent to offer free one-year trials of its body camera products and Evidence.com services to U.S. law enforcement agencies. While the Taser product line still contributes to a significant portion of its revenue, the company's technologies business had seen major gains. As of 2017, they comprised a quarter of the company's business, while Axon cameras had a market share of 85% among police departments in the United States' major cities. The rebranding was also intended to help distance the company from the negative stigma surrounding the Taser brand, with Smith acknowledging that they were "a bit of a distraction" when recruiting employees for its technology business.
In May 2018, Axon acquired competitor VieVu for $4.6 million in cash and $2.5 million in common stock.
