Olivetti

Olivetti S.p.A.

Type	Subsidiary
Industry	information technology
Founded	1908; 109 years ago (1908)
Founder	Camillo Olivetti
Headquarters	Ivrea, Italy
Area served	Europe South America
Key people	Simone Battiferri Chairman Riccardo Delleani CEO
Products	personal computers computer printers typewriters calculators microsystems computer peripherals hardware
Revenue	€227 million (2014)
Number of employees	582 (2014)
Parent	Telecom Italia
Website	olivetti.it

Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of typewriters, computers, tablets, smartphones, printers and other such business products as calculators and fax machines. Headquartered in Ivrea, in the Metropolitan City of Turin, the company has been part of the Telecom Italia Group since 2003. The first commercial programmable "desktop computer", the Programma 101, was produced by Olivetti in 1964 and was a commercial success.

The company was founded as a typewriter manufacturer by Camillo Olivetti in 1908 in Ivrea, Italy. The firm was mainly developed by his son Adriano Olivetti. Olivetti opened its first overseas manufacturing plant in 1930, and its Divisumma electric calculator was launched in 1948. Olivetti produced Italy's first electronic computer, the transistorised Elea 9003, in 1959, and purchased the Underwood Typewriter Company that year. In 1964 the company sold its electronics division to the American company General Electric. It continued to develop new computing products on its own; one of these was Programma 101, the first commercially produced personal computer. In the 1970s and 1980s they were the biggest manufacturer for office machines in Europe and 2nd biggest PC vendor behind IBM in Europe.

In 1980 Olivetti is distributed in Indonesia through Dragon Computer & Communication.

Olivetti was famous for the attention it gave to design:

[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.