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Ask HN: Which industries have most people have never heard of?

40 points by jfim ↗ HN
What are examples of industries and companies that do exist, and that most people have never heard of?

One example is to open one's wallet and look at the back of the cards. Odds are, at least one of them will say "Gemalto," which is the largest SIM card manufacturer and has about 50% of the world market for banking cards. Most people don't know that this is a several billion dollar industry.

What are other examples?

Idea for this thread came from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23534319

16 comments

[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 54.8 ms ] thread
giantg2
I think ASML makes the chips for companies that design them (like NVDA).
spydum
Ykk for zippers, though they got noticed a few years ago but the interwebs.
9nGQluzmnq3M
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the largest semiconductor company in the world. Apple, AMD, Intel, Nvidia etc are all its customers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC

hariharan_uno
I think this is pretty well known. But I'd say most regular people haven't heard of ASML, which apparently produces the equipment used by all these fabs.
newswasboring
If we are listing companies like ASML might as well also name drop companies like KLA-tencore, Tokyo Electron Limited, lambda research. List goes on and on. These companies are actually of strategic importance as semiconductors are of strategic importance to many countries.

What is more surprising to me that some of the more commonly known brands are also semi equipment manufacturers. For example, although ASML has a virtual monopoly (a real monopoly on anything beyond n10 I think) their main competition are Nikon and cannon. Especially on the mature nodes.

joezydeco
Molex.

They make connectors, interconnects, cabling, and switches for everything from cars to aircraft to computers to smartphones.

ivan1783
Electromagnetic compatibility - every company that manufactures any kind of electronics has to deal with it but the circle of people who do it is comparatively very small.
lucas_membrane
That's a great question; I suspect that there are quite a few pretty big $ software firms doing vertical market software enterprise apps for specific types of enterprises/entities with unusual requirements who are happy that few know how successful they may be. Are there dominant software providers for any of the following (bigger than mom-and-pop businesses, with many organizations in the industry): 1. Large construction projects 2. Paper mills 3. Motion picture production 4. Oil and gas drilling 5. Cattle ranches 6. Local property tax assessment and collection 7. Traffic ticket and traffic court management 8. Water works and/or Sewer plant management 9. Prison management 10. Automobile junkyards 11. Parking lots and parking structures 12. Independent bookstores 13. Rental property management 14. Exercise clubs 15. School districts 16. Churches ???

Somebody spill the beans, please.

jamieweb
My favourite one is a CMS, which stands for Crematorium Management System.
rshnotsecure
Most of the funeral industry has been bought out by private equity interestingly. A single firm, Providence Equity, now controls most of the "Death Care" industry in the US. Also yes that is the official term.

https://provequity.com

qppo
It's probably not a billion dollar business, but inMusic has a strangehold on cheap/budget MIDI gear (Alesis, Akai, M-Audio, Numark).
gt565k
Overhead cranes.

They move everything in the supply chain. From raw material and resource extraction, to ports, to manufacturing facilities and paper plants, and even standing up rockets for NASA and SpaceX.

Every time I tell people I work for a crane company, they think cranes that build buildings, which are totally not our industry.

danieka
Patio11’s Law: The software economy is bigger than you think, even when you take into account Patio11’s Law.