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Do these two sentences imply different meanings?

Our company is based in Melbourne, Australia.

Our company is located in Melbourne, Australia.

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2 Answers

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I would say so, yes.

It's subtle, though.

"based" implies that you are speaking of a head office even though the business may have sub-offices.

Some employee in the US might say: "Sony is based in Japan" [although they probably have offices in America]

"located" is simply specifying the location.

"The Sony head office is located in Japan"

"Based in" simply adds a bit of information about where the main office of a company is. Not always the case, but in many cases.

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True, except that no one would say that Kodak is based in Japan. :) – mmyers Aug 23 '10 at 16:09
Had a friend who worked for Kodak. He always was talking about transferring to Japan... so it stuck in my head for some reason. I'll change it to... Sony! – Atømix Aug 23 '10 at 16:36
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Agree, but would point out that using based in X implies that there are significant operations elsewhere, whereas located in Y implies that essentially the entire operation is there. – moioci Aug 24 '10 at 2:35
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For how I understand it, based at Shirley means the center of operations are on Shirley, while located in Shirley could refer to one of the agencies of the business.

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