Sharp Corporation is a Japanese multinational corporation that manufactures electronic products. Since 2016 it has been majority owned by Foxconn Group, a Taiwan based company. Let’s take a closer look to summary of the Sharp company.

Currently their headquarters are in Sakai-ku, Sakai, Osaka Prefecture with more than 50.000 people workers worldwide.

Sharp was founded on September 15, 1912 in Tokyo by Tokuji Hayakawa. He founded a metal workshop in Tokyo and one of his inventions was the Ever-Sharp mechanical pencil in 1915, a name that the Sharp Corporation derived its name.

When the Great Kanto earthquake destroyed the pencil business in 1923, the company relocated to Osaka and began to design radio sets in 1925.
The company was established as “Hayakawa Metal Works” in 1924, in Tanabe-cho, Osaka. In 1942, the name was changed to “Hayakawa Electric Industry Company”. Later in 1953, Hayakawa Electric started producing the first Japan-made TV sets.

In November 2000, Sharp Mobile communication Division created the world’s first commercial camera phone, the J-SH04. It was only available in Japan and it’s the Japan’s first phone with a built-in, back-facing camera with a 110.000 pixel CMOS image sensor and a 256 color display.

Sharp reportedly led the market share of mobile phones in Japanese market in April 2012 and held 3rd place in Japanese mobile phone market share in May 2015.

The Sharp company gained 2.27 trillion Yen revenue in 2020 with the net income reached 20.96 billion Yen. With total assets worth 1.83 trillion Yen in year 2020 they received 52.77 billion Yen from operating income.

The year 2012 was the 100th anniversary for Sharp but instead the company announced its worst financial record in its history with a loss of 376 billion Yen in April 2012 and announced job cuts. In 2014, Sharp was able to overcome the losses and gained positive net income.

On March 30, 2016 Foxconn announced that it had greed to pay US$ 3.5 billion for the controlling stake in Sharp.

Current productions by the company are TVs, audiovisual, home appliances, ICs, Mobile phones, electronic components, LCD panels, calculators and information equipment. Since 2000, Sharp have been heavily investing in LCD panel manufacturing plants : Kameyama in 2004 and Sakai in 2009.