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 Olivetti headquarters in Ivrea, Italy | |
| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Information technology |
| Founded | 1908; 118 years ago (1908) |
| Founder | Camillo Olivetti |
| Headquarters | , Italy |
Area served | Europe andSouth America |
Key people | [1][2] |
| Products | |
| Revenue | €227 million(2014)[3] |
| Owner | TIM (100%) |
Number of employees | 582(2014)[3] |
| Parent | TIM |
| Website | www.olivetti.com |
Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, tablets, smartphones, printers and other such business products as calculators andfax machines.[4] Headquartered inIvrea, in theMetropolitan City of Turin, the company has been owned byTIM S.p.A. since 2003.[5]
The company is known for innovative product design, ranging from the 1950sLettera 22 portable typewriter, to some of the first commercial programmabledesktop calculators, such as the 1964Programma 101, as well as the pop-art inspiredValentine typewriter of 1969. Between 1954 and 2001, Italy'sAssociation of Industrial Design (ADI) awarded 16Compasso d'Oro prizes to Olivetti products and designs – more than any other company or designer.[6][7] At one point in the 1980s, Olivetti was the world's third largestpersonal computer manufacturer[8] and remained the largest such European manufacturer during the 1990s.[9]
The company was founded as "Ing. C. Olivetti & C., S.p.A."[10] byCamillo Olivetti in 1908 in theTurin commune ofIvrea,Italy. Olivetti was initially atypewriter manufacturer.[11] The firm was mainly developed by his sonAdriano Olivetti.[12][13]
Olivetti opened its first overseas manufacturing plant in 1930, and itsDivisumma electric calculator was launched in 1948. It inspiredThomas J. Watson Jr. to change IBM's approach to industrial design beginning in the 1950s.[14] In 1959, Olivetti produced Italy's firstelectronic computer, thetransistorisedElea 9003, and bought theUnderwood Typewriter Company. It sold its electronics division toGeneral Electric as required by banks for new loans.[15] But it continued to develop new computing products, includingProgramma 101, one of the first commercially producedprogrammable calculators.[16][17][18] In the 1970s and 1980s, Olivetti was the biggest manufacturer of office machines inEurope and 2nd biggest PC vendor in Europe afterIBM.
In 1980, Olivetti began distributing in Indonesia through Dragon Computer & Communication.[citation needed]
In 1981, Olivetti installed theelectronic voting systems for the European Parliament in Strasburg and Luxembourg.[19]
In 1986, the company acquiredTriumph-Adler, a major office equipment manufacturer based in Germany that also produced typewriters, fromLitton Industries of the United States.[20][21] With this acquisition, Olivetti grabbed 50 percent of the European typewriter market.[22]
In September 1994, the company launched Olivetti Telemedia chaired by Elserino Piol.[23]
Since 2003, Olivetti has been part of theTelecom Italia Group through a merger.[24]
[A] preoccupation with design developed into a comprehensive corporate philosophy, which embraced everything from the shape of a space bar to the color scheme for an advertising poster.
— Jonathan Martin, International Directory of Company Histories, Olivetti S.p.A., vol. 34, p.316
Olivetti became famous for the meticulous attention it paid to thedesign of its products, through collaborations with notable architects and designers, over a nearly 60-year period starting in the late 1930s.[12] An early example is the portable 1932Olivetti MP1 (Modello Portatile in Italian).
From the 1940s to the 1960s, Olivettiindustrial design was led byMarcello Nizzoli, who was responsible for theLexicon 80 and the portableLettera 22 typewriters, which were released in 1948 and 1950 respectively.[27] The architect and designerEttore Sottsass began consulting for Olivetti in the late 1950s and designed a series of products including the Tekne 3 typewriter in 1958, theElea 9003 computer in 1959, and later, the Praxis 48 typewriter in 1964 and the Valentine portable typewriter in 1969.[28][29]
In 1954,Mario Tchou joined Olivetti and was in put in charge of a team responsible for creating a commercial computer. In 1957, the team created the Elea 9001. Tchou went on to lead a team of 500 engineers, and decided to include transistors in the Elea 9003.[15]
Mario Bellini joined Sottsass at Olivetti in 1963. He designed theProgramma 101 (1965), theDivisumma 18 (1973), and the Logos 68 (1973) calculators,[17][30] and in 1966 the TCV-250video display terminal.[31]Mario Bellini andEttore Sottsass, who by then directed design for Olivetti, hired designers such asGeorge Sowden andJames Irvine. Sowden worked for Olivetti from 1970 until 1990 and designed the company's firstdesktop computer, the Olivetti L1, in 1978 (following ergonomic research lasting two years). In 1991, Sowden's design for the Olivettifax OFX420 won theADICompasso d'Oro Award.[32][7] In 1999Michele De Lucchi designed the Art Jet 10inkjet printer, which was also awarded the Compasso d'Oro, and in 2001,[7] the Gioconda calculator.[33][34]
In 1952, theMuseum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) held an exhibit titled "Olivetti: Design in Industry".[35] Another exhibit was mounted by theMusée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1969 and later toured five other cities.[36] Many Olivetti products and archival material related to design are held in museum collections including the MoMA design collection, theCooper Hewitt in New York,[37] and theCentre Pompidou in Paris.[38] Between 1954 and 2001, Olivetti won 16 Compasso d'Oro awards for design.[7] In May 2022,ADI Design Museum in Milan paid tribute to this achievement with an exhibition titled Podium 16.[39]
Olivetti paid attention to more than product design. Graphic design and architectural design was also considered pivotal to the company, which engaged architects and designers such asGae Aulenti,Walter Ballmer [it],BBPR,Egon Eiermann,Figini e Pollini [it],Ignazio Gardella,Louis Kahn,Le Corbusier,Carlo Scarpa,Giovanni Pintori,Bob Noorda, andLella andMassimo Vignelli to design factories, office buildings, showrooms, and publicity materials.[40][41][42][43][44][45]
Giovanni Pintori was hired by Adriano Olivetti in 1936 to work in the publicity department. Pintori was the creator of the Olivetti logo and many promotional posters used to advertise the company and its products. During his activity as Art Director from 1950, Olivetti's graphic design obtained several international awards, and he designed works that created the Olivetti image and became emblematic Italian reference in the history of 20th-century design.[46]
Those designers also created the Olivetti Synthesis office furniture series which mainly were used to be installed in the firm's own headquarters, worldwide branch offices and showrooms. Olivetti also produced some industrial production machinery, including metalworking machines of the Horizon series.
Olivetti began with mechanical typewriters when the company was founded in 1909, and produced them until the mid-1990s. Until the mid-1960s, they were fully mechanical, and models such as the portableOlivetti Valentine were designed by Ettore Sottsass.
With the Tekne/Editor series and Praxis 48, some of the first electromechanical typewriters were introduced. The Editor series was used for speed typing championship competition. The Editor 5 from 1969 was the top model of that series, with proportional spacing and the ability to support justified text borders. In 1972 the electromechanical typeball machines of the Lexicon 90 to 94C series were introduced, as competitors to theIBM Selectric typewriters, the top model 94c supported proportional spacing and justified text borders like the Editor 5, as well as lift-off correction.
In 1978 Olivetti was one of the first manufacturers to introduce electronic daisywheel printer-based word processing machines, called TES 401 and TES 501. Later the ET series typewriters without (or with)LCD and different levels of text editing capabilities were popular in offices. Models in that line were ET 121, ET 201, ET 221, ET 225, ET 231, ET 351, ET 109, ET 110, ET 111, ET 112, ET 115, ET 116, ET 2000, ET 2100, ET 2200, ET 2250, ET 2300, Et 2400 and ET 2500. For home users in 1982 the Praxis 35, Praxis 40 and 45D were some of the first portable electronic typewriters. Later, Olivetti added the Praxis 20, ET Compact 50, ET Compact 60, ET Compact 70, ET Compact 65/66, the ET Personal series and Linea 101. The top models were 8 lines LCD based portables like Top 100 and Studio 801, with the possibility to save the text to a3.5-inch floppy disk.
The professional line was upgraded with the ETV series video typewriters based onCP/M operating system, ETV 240, ETV 250, ETV 300, ETV 350 and laterMS-DOS operating system based ETV 260, ETV 500, ETV 2700, ETV 2900, ETV 4000s word processing systems having floppy drives orhard disks. Some of them (ETV 300, 350, 500, 2900) were external boxes that could be connected through an optional serial interface to many of the ET series office typewriters, the others were fully integrated with an external monitor which could be installed on a holder over the desk. Most of the ET/ETV/Praxis series electronic typewriters were designed by Marion Bellini.
By the 1970s and 1980s, the typewriter market had matured under the market dominance of large companies from Europe and the United States. Before the advent of dailywheel and electronic machines (and subsequently the personal computers and word processing software) — Olivetti and the other major manufacturers faced strong competition from typewriters from Asia, includingBrother Industries andSilver Seiko Ltd. of Japan.
By 1994, Olivetti stopped production of typewriters, as most users had transitioned topersonal computers.[citation needed]
Between 1955 and 1964 Olivetti developed some of the first transistorizedmainframe computer systems, such as theElea 9003. Although 40 large commercial 9003 and over 100 smaller 6001 scientific machines were completed and leased to customers to 1964, low sales, loss of two key managers and financial instability caused Olivetti to withdraw from the field in 1964.
In 1965 Olivetti released theProgramma 101, considered one of the first commercial desktop programmable calculators.[47] It was saved from the sale of the computer division to GE thanks to an employee, Gastone Garziera, who spent successive nights changing the internal categorization of the product from "computer" to "calculator", so leaving the small team in Olivetti and creating some awkward situations in the office, since that space was now owned by GE.[48] In 1974 the firm released theTC800, an intelligent terminal designed to be attached to a mainframe and used in the finance sector. It was followed in 1977 by theTC1800.
During the 1970s Olivetti also manufactured and sold two ranges of minicomputers. The 'A' series started with the typewriter-sized A4 through to the large A8, and the desk-sized DE500 and DE700 series.
Olivetti's first modern personal computer, theM20, featuring aZilog Z8000CPU, was released in 1982.[49] The M20 was followed in 1983 by theM24,[50] a clone of theIBM PC usingDOS and theIntel 8086 processor (at 8MHz) instead of theIntel 8088 used byIBM (at 4.77 MHz). The M24 was sold in North America as theAT&T6300. Olivetti also manufactured theAT&T 6300 Plus, which could run both DOS andUnix.[51] The M24 in the US also was sold asXerox 6060. TheOlivetti M28 was the firm's first PC to have theIntel 80286 processor. The same year Olivetti produced itsM10 laptop computer,[52] an8085-based workalike of the successfulRadio ShackTRS-80 Model 100, which it marketed in Europe.[53] These were the first laptops to sell in million-unit quantities, though theOlivetti M10 [it] itself only attained sales figures in the tens of thousands and went out of production within two years.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Olivetti continued to release PC-compatible machines, facing mounting competition from other brands. It turned to producing laptops: in 1991 it introduced theD33, a laptop in a carry case, and later theM111,M211,S20,D33,Philos andEchos series. A very interesting subnotebook was theQuaderno, about the same size as an A5 paper – it was the grandfather ofnetbook computers introduced 20 years later.
Olivetti tried to recover its position by introducing theEnvision in 1995,[54] a fullmultimedia PC to be used in aliving room; this project was a failure.Gateway also introduced a similar product in the U.S., called the Destination 2000, around the same period, to a similarly mixed commercial reception.[55]: 156
The company continued to develop personal computers until it sold its PC business in 1997.
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In the 1990s, Olivetti's computer businesses were in great difficulty, reportedly because of the competition from US vendors and new cheap manufacturers for PC components inTaiwan likeASUS,MSI,Gigabyte and others from which local system builders profited much to offer cheaper PCs than Olivetti did with their own designs. It was on the brink of collapse and had needed government support to stay afloat.[citation needed]
In 1992,Digital Equipment Corporation announced its intention to invest in Olivetti, approximating to a 10% stake valued at around$300 million, amidst a wave of investment in European companies by their US counterparts. Digital were already reselling Olivetti personal computer models in Europe, and the investment presented an opportunity for the adoption of Digital's Alpha processor in Olivetti's workstation products.[56] The investment was to be done in two steps over 18 months, augmented by additional share purchases.[57] The partnership between the companies, regarded as a way of supporting Olivetti whilst cementing a development relationship around Digital's Alpha platform, developed in the following two years, although the balance of revenue from selling products to each other was reported as being strongly in Olivetti's favour, it having generated125.3 billion lire from Digital in 1993, but with Digital only selling products worth9.9 billion lire to Olivetti. Digital remained a significant buyer of laser printers and laptops from Olivetti, but had begun to manufacture its own personal computers and planned to produce its own laptops. Meanwhile, Olivetti had been slow to introduce Alpha-based products, eventually shipping models based on Digital's own products. With Digital's finances under pressure, posting quarterly losses and incurring costs around redundancies, the company sold its stake – noted as amounting to 7.8% – for$150 million.[58]
It ended its typewriter business in favor of personal computers, but in 1997 spun off its personal computer business and in 1998 divested its computer services business. During that period, it turned to telecommunications.[59] In the process, it had lost around 75% of its staff.[citation needed]
In 1999, TheLuxembourg-based company Bell S.A. acquired a controlling stake in Olivetti, but two years later sold it to a consortium including thePirelli andBenetton groups. In February 1999, Olivetti launched a hostile bid for the seven-times-larger monopolyTelecom Italia, Italy's #1 fixed-line and mobile phone operator. Another bidder, namelyDeutsche Telekom, reportedly won the take-over battle, with an$82 billion merger agreed in April 1999.[59] But in the end Olivetti won, buying 52.12% control of Telecom Italia. However, the ownership structure of the merged company was complex and multi-layered, adding $16 billion debt. It was referred to as the "Olivetti/Telecom Italia affair" because of the secret affairs.
After a 2003 reorganization, Olivetti became the office equipment and systems services subsidiary of Telecom Italia. Thus it was absorbed into the Telecom Italia Group, but maintained a separate identity as Olivetti Tecnost.
In 2005,Telecom Italia relaunched the company in the information technology sector, investing €200 million, at first restoring the original Olivetti brand, then replacing it with Olivetti Tecnost in 2003. In 2007, Olivetti launched the "LINEA_OFFICE", designed byJasper Morrison for Olivetti; a new line of PCs, notebooks, printers,fax machines and calculators. Olivetti today operates in Italy andSwitzerland, and has sales associates in 83 countries. Research and development were based inAgliè,Carsoli andScarmagno in Italy, andYverdon, Switzerland.
In March 2011 Olivetti began producing the OliPad, its firsttablet computer, featuring a ten-inch screen, 3G, WiFi,Bluetooth connectivity,Nvidia Tegra 2,Android 2.2.2 and a 1024 x 600 display. It also features an application store, withapps specifically designed by Olivetti for 'business & government'.[60] In 2014 the R&D department inArnad was sold toSICPA.[61]
In 2013, Olivetti launched a series of smartphones calledOliphone:[62]
technically, the machine was a programmable calculator, not a computer.
It appears that the Mathatronics Mathatron calculator preceeded [sic] the Programma 101 to market.
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