Alps Electric Co.

Infobox_Company
company_name = Alps Electric Co., Ltd.
company_
company_type = Public (tyo|6770
company_slogan = N/A
foundation = 1948
location = 1-7 Yukigaya-otsuka-cho
Ota, Tokyo, Japan
〒145-8501
key_people =
num_employees =
revenue =
industry =
products = Electronics devices
homepage = [http://www.alps.com/ www.alps.com]

Nihongo|Alps Electric Co., Ltd.|アルプス電気株式会社|Arupusu Denki Kabushiki-gaisha (tyo|6770) produces electronic devices, including potentiometers and touchpads. Alps is a multinational corporation, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. The company was established in 1948. As of 2004, the CEO is Masataka Kataoka. Alps is also well-known for the Alpine brand of car audio.

Alps licenses their touchpad hardware from Cirque Corporation, but write their own drivers. Their drivers are Windows certified. They all have simple features such as edge scrolling, but no programmability. They are mostly found in Sony notebooks, as well as the OLPC XO-1. They also manufacture keyboards for Apple computers, including the original Macintosh and the first iMac.

They also created printers, but have since dropped support of them outside the Japanese market, although there are suppliers sourcing stock of printers and consumables from Japan for sale worldwide.

External links

* [http://www.alps.com/ Alps Electric Global Site]