Sharp
More info
- Creator
- Tokuji Hayakawa
- Released
- 1912
- Type
- Electronics company
- Owner
- Foxconn (Hon Hai), from 2016
Japanese electronics maker named after a mechanical pencil, which took the calculator and the LCD from the lab to the pocket.
Tokuji Hayakawa started out in Tokyo in 1912 making belt buckles, and in 1915 launched the Ever-Sharp mechanical pencil that gave the company its name. After the 1923 earthquake the business moved to Osaka and into radio and electronics. In 1964 came the CS-10A, one of the first all-transistor desktop calculators, and in the 1970s Sharp led the push to put LCDs into calculators — in a bruising race with Casio.
LCD expertise became the company's backbone: panels for TVs, phones and the Zaurus handhelds of the 1990s. Sharp also built phones for others, including Microsoft's short-lived Kin from Danger. Huge bets on panel factories ended in losses, and in 2016 Foxconn took a majority stake — the first takeover of a major Japanese electronics firm by a foreign buyer.