Atlas Electronics Corp. Ltd.
G.P.O. Box 14905, Hong Kong (1964)

Atlas Electronics was one of the first and largest transistor radio manufactures in Hong Kong in the 1960s and 1970s. At its zenith, Atlas was making 250,000 (one quarter million) transistor radios per month.

Atlas produced several brands, notably Imperial and Blue Bell, with 20 different models for wholesale buyers to choose from.

Atlas Electronics Corp. Ltd was founded by Peter Hsiao-Tsing Woo (1924-2011), whom many recognized as the father of the electronics industry in Hong Kong. Peter Woo had begun manufacturing transistor radios a few years earlier under a different company name (Champaign Ltd) as a subsidy of Japanese Sony Corporation. The deal only lasted a couple of years.

In May 1962, Peter Woo incorporated Atlas Electronics Corporation and consolidated his operations under the Atlas name. Although Woo was the majority owner, according to a 1963 article in International Management about Atlas, he delegated the management of the firm to three managers of different nationalities – an Israeli by the name of A.M. Cappon handled sales, an Englishman who handled money and a Chinese engineer who handled operations. By then Atlas had 400 workers and was churning out 80,000 six-transistor radios per month with average 90 day delivery to New York.

By 1967, Atlas was producing 250,000 radios a month according to the Trade Bulletin published by the HK Department of Industry and Commerce. The firm was so successful that it went public in 1969 on the newly formed Far East Stock Exchange with Woo as its chairman, becoming the first electronics company listed in the Hong Kong stock market.

Business continued to grow in the early 1970s. Atlas had a manufacturing subsidiary in Singapore and plans to expand its operations to other parts of Asia. Atlas diversified its product line and began to supply cassette tape recorders, FM multiplex stereo sound equipment, transistors, polyvaricon tuning condensers, RF transformers, oscillator coils, electrolytic capacitors, input and output power transformers, and ferrite bars.

In recognition of his contributions to the electronics industry in Hong Kong and his charitable work, Peter Woo was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1975. By the late 1970s Atlas faced intense competition in the low-end electronics segment and business was floundering. On December 31, 1979, Woo sold his 49% stake in Atlas to an American businessman Albert J. Miller for US$1 million and retired from the firm he founded. Under AJ Miller, the firm was renamed Atlas Industries and enjoyed a brief turnaround as a large supplier of computer heads and floppy disk drives to IBM, with its stock valuation soared 36 times to HK$2 billion between 1980 and1984, only to collapse in 1985 when IBM cancelled its orders and went into receivership. After his retirement from Atlas in 1979, Woo dedicated most of his time and money in Christian causes building churches and schools in Hong Kong and China and passed away on April 4^th, 2011 at the age of 87.

(Reference: http://industrialhistoryhk.org/peter-woo-father-hong-kong-electronics-industry/ )