Barry Lam (Chinese: 林百里; pinyin: Lín Bǎilǐ; Yale: Lam4 Baak3 Lei5; born 1949 in Shanghai) is the founder and Chairman of Quanta Computer, the leading laptop producer worldwide. He is also a major patron of the arts and a leading philanthropist in the area of culture and education. In 2011, Forbes named him as the 376th richest person in the world and 6th richest in Taiwan with a net worth of US$3 billion. In 2012, he is cited as the 296th richest person in the world and 5th richest in Taiwan with a net worth of US$4.2 billion.
Barry Lam was born in Shanghai and raised in Hong Kong. His father was an accountant for the Hong Kong Club. He studied engineering in Taiwan, graduating from National Taiwan University with bachelor and master degrees in electrical engineering.
In 1973, he and some former classmates founded Kinpo, a manufacturer of handheld calculators. As president of the company he built it into the largest contract manufacturer of calculators. In the late 1980s, he became convinced that notebook computers would be the next big product. He left Kinpo and founded Quanta Computer in 1988. He set up Quanta Computer with the help of a colleague C. C. Leung with capital of less than US$900,000. It had a turnover of NTD777 billion in 2007, US$23.7 billion.
Barry Lam is recognized as a leading visionary in the high-tech field. A combination of engineering talent, innovative thinking and entrepreneurial skills, has enabled him to build Quanta into one of the biggest high-tech companies worldwide. In 2006, Fortune Magazine recognized Quanta as one of the Fortune Global 500 Companies, and in 2007, Forbes placed Quanta 15th in its ranking of the world's most admired computer companies, the highest ranking of a Taiwanese company. Quanta designs and manufactures for clients such as Apple Inc., Compaq, Dell, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, Alienware, Casper, Cisco, Fujitsu, Gericom, Lenovo, LG, Maxdata, MPC, Sharp Corporation, Siemens AG, Sony, Sun Microsystems, and Toshiba. It is the largest manufacturer of PC notebooks worldwide and it has also diversified into servers, storage, and liquid-crystal display terminals.
Read more about Barry Lam: Quanta, Teams, MIT Project T-Party, One Laptop Per Child, Public Computers, Patron of The Arts and Philanthropist, Honors
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—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)