The expression BYOD first began to appear in early 2011, when US multinationals Unisys Corporation and Citrix Inc, an IT services provider and software company respectively, identified this policy as an emerging trend. The alternative initialisms BYOC (bring your own computer), BYOP (bring your own phone) and BYOPC (bring your own PC (=personal computer)) are also sometimes used to refer to similar concepts, and in linguistic terms could be thought of as hyponyms (=specific examples) of BYOD. These variations are not exclusive to work contexts however, the abbreviation BYOC for example sometimes used when gamers bring their own computers to hook up to a network and take part in a multiplayer gaming event.