WhereIsAtlas · Technology

What Happened to Casio?

The company behind the G-Shock and the keytar never stopped making things — and its icon is a $20 watch that's sold 100 million times.

Casio never dominated one market, but it kept inventing — calculators, digital cameras, the G-Shock, the F-91W that sold 100 million times, even the keytar — and survives today as a profitable, diversified electronics maker.

The most-recognisable watch on the planet

There is a wristwatch that costs about $20, looks basically unchanged for decades, and is one of the most recognisable objects ever made. It's the Casio F-91W, and it says 'Casio' on it. Then there's the G-Shock, the tank of a watch that survived being dropped from buildings. Both come from one of the most unlikely great technology companies.

Casio never dominated a single market the way Apple did. It just kept making things — calculators, watches, instruments, cameras and more — and remarkably, it's still going. This is the story of a company that never really 'fell,' but kept reinventing instead.

From a gadget to a calculator empire

Casio was founded in 1946 in Tokyo by Kashio Tadao, who initially made a small gadget that fitted a pipe into a cigarette holder. The company soon found its calling in electronics, and became one of the first makers of compact, mass-market calculators.

By the 1970s casio was a household name in Japan and around the world for calculators and digital watches — two products it rode into the mainstream.

The 1980s: an age of invention

The 1980s were Casio's golden, frenetic era. It produced one of the world's first digital cameras, keyboards and samplers that made music affordable, and the genuinely iconic CZ synthesizers. It even gave the world the 'keytar' — a keyboard-guitar that became a symbol of 80s pop excess.

It also launched the G-Shock in 1983, a shock-resistant watch engineered, in legend, to survive a drop from the third floor using a floating case construction. That one line became the source of Casio's — and arguably modern watchmaking's — most enduring icon.

The $20 watch that sold 100 million times

In 1989 Casio released the F-91W, a simple, digital, plastic watch with a stopwatch and a light. It was cheap, indestructible, and went on to sell well over 100 million units. It became a cultural artefact — the default watch for decades of kids, students, soldiers and everyone else.

Its ubiquity is astonishing for a single product. More than almost anything else, the F-91W and the G-Shock are what keep the name 'Casio' alive in the public imagination.

Where is Casio now?

Today Casio is still a profitable, diversified electronics maker. It still sells calculators, and its watches — especially G-Shock and Edifice — are more culturally resonant than ever, enjoying a retro-cool moment. It also makes musical instruments, projectors and more.

Casio never became a tech titan, but it also never went under. Its lesson is almost the opposite of the fallen giants: sometimes the way to last is not to bet everything on one big product, but to keep making a surprising range of useful things and surviving on the margins.

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