Formerly known as Rockwell Semiconductor, Conexant was formed in 1999 when Rockwell International spun off its semiconductor business. Conexant has been manufacturing winmodems and other telecommunications hardware, both under the Rockwell name and the Conexant name.
Most of Conexant's business is through the licensing of it's modem chipset to other manufacturers of Winmodems. Companies such as Dell and HP use Conexant modems in their newer systems.
What I dislike about Conexant modems is the fact that they are only usable for connecting to the Internet. Though I'm in a minority grouping by making that statement, that can be a good thing since anyone buying a computer is most likely going to use it to go online. In my humble opinion, a modem should be able to connect any other modem service on the planet, whether it be an ISP, or the TAP port of a alphanumeric paging service.