2000, Rockwell International Corp and its Rockwell Collins unit agreed to acquire Sony Corp's Sony Trans Com (Irvine, California) for undisclosed terms. Sony had purchased the business from Sundstrand Corporation in 1989. On December 20, 2000, Rockwell Collins expanded its services to commercial and executive aviation in Mercosur countries. The company had acquired several companies, including Hughes-Avicom's in-flight entertainment business (1998), Sony Trans Com (2000), Intertrade Ltd., Flight Dynamics, K Systems, Inc. (Kaiser companies), Communication Solutions, Inc., Airshow, Inc. (2002), NLX (Simulation Business) in 2003, portions of Evans & Sutherland, TELDIX GmbH, IP Unwired, Anzus Inc. in 2006, Information Technology and Applications Corp in 2007, Athena Technologies, Datapath Inc. (divested in 2014), SEOS Displays Ltd., Air Routing International in 2010, Computing Technologies for Aviation (CTA) in 2011, ARINC in 2014, and BE Aerospace in 2017. The company was among the major suppliers of in-flight entertainment (IFE). Rockwell Collins' key competitors in this industry included Panasonic Avionics Corporation, Thales Group, and JetBlue's IFE subsidiary LiveTV, which was later purchased by Thales in 2014 for $400 million. In 2010, the company employed over 20,000 people and had an annual turnover of US$4.665 billion. Its nonexecutive chairman was Anthony Carbone following the retirement of Clayton M. Jones. In September 2012, Kelly Ortberg was appointed as president of the company. In August 2013, Kelly Ortberg was appointed CEO of Rockwell Collins. Acquisition by United Technologies On September 4, 2017, United Technologies of Farmington, Connecticut, agreed to acquire the company for $30 billion. The transaction closed on November 26, 2018. Past products Broadcast transmitters Starting in the mid-1930s, the Collins Radio Company constructed and sold transmitters and audio mixing consoles to the broadcast industry. In 1939, the model 12 Speech Input Console, in addition to the 26C limiter amplifier, was licensed to Canadian Marconi Co. for both sales in Canada and His Majesty's Service for the war effort. Collins' success in constructing broadcast transmitters continued to grow, selling well over a thousand up to the start of World War II. During World War II, Collins' expertise grew in high-power transmitters, producing designs that ran well over 15 kilowatts (kW) of RF power on a continuous basis. After the war, some AM transmitters were produced, called the 300G, and remain the finest in low-power AM transmitters (300W) ever produced. Collins remained an important manufacturer of AM and FM broadcast radio transmitters for the commercial market surviving