Calculators are more affordable than phones, and run on batteries and solar power (Lillian SUWANRUMPHA) <\/p>\n
The humble pocket calculator may not be able to keep up with the mathematical capabilities of new technology, but it will never hallucinate.<\/p>\n
The device’s enduring reliability equates to millions of sales each year for Japan’s Casio, which is even eyeing expansion in certain regions.<\/p>\n
Despite lightning-speed advances in artificial intelligence, chatbots still sometimes stumble on basic addition.<\/p>\n
In contrast, “calculators always give the correct answer,” Casio executive Tomoaki Sato told AFP.<\/p>\n
But he conceded that calculators could one day go the way of the abacus.<\/p>\n
“It’s undeniable that the market for personal calculators used in business is on a downward trend,” Sato said in Tokyo.<\/p>\n
Smartphones and web browsers can handle everyday sums, while AI models achieved gold-level scores for the first time this year at a prestigious global maths contest.<\/p>\n
But calculators are more affordable than phones, and run on batteries and solar power — a plus for schools in developing countries, a potential growth area for Casio, Sato said.<\/p>\n
And people who do buy calculators prefer the way they feel, he argued.<\/p>\n
Thitinan Suntisubpool, co-owner of a shop selling red bags and beckoning cats in Bangkok’s Chinatown, said she loves how durable her big calculator is, having dropped it several times.<\/p>\n
“It’s more convenient in many ways,” the 58-year-old told AFP.<\/p>\n
“We can use it to press the numbers and show the customer,” avoiding language-barrier misunderstandings.<\/p>\n
But at a nearby street stall selling clocks, torches and calculators, the vendor, who gave her name as Da, said calculator sales were “quiet”.<\/p>\n
– ‘Optimised tools’ –<\/p>\n
At a Casio factory in Thailand, assembly line workers slotted green circuit boards into place and popped cuboid buttons labelled “DEL” from a plastic tub onto pastel-blue calculator frames.<\/p>\n
“Calculators are still in demand,” said Ryohei Saito, a general manager for Casio in Thailand.<\/p>\n
“Not everywhere in the world has smartphone connectivity, and calculators are optimised tools focused on necessary functions,” he said.<\/p>\n
In the year to March 2025, Casio sold 39 million calculators, general and scientific, in around 100 countries.<\/p>\n
That compares to 45 million in 2019-20, but is still up from the 31 million that sold the following year after the Covid-19 pandemic hit.<\/p>\n
The company has come a long way from the 1957 invention of the desk-sized “14-A”, which it says was the first compact all-electric calculator.<\/p>\n
Calculator history even made headlines recently when Christie’s suspended the Paris sale of an early calculating machine, “La Pascaline”, after a court said it could not be taken abroad.<\/p>\n
The auction house called the ebony-decorated 1642 device “the first attempt in history to substitute the human mind with a machine”.<\/p>\n
Those attempts have accelerated with AI.<\/p>\n
– Scoring gold –<\/p>\n
In July, AI models made by Google, OpenAI and DeepSeek reached gold-level scores at the annual International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO).<\/p>\n
But neither attained full marks at the annual contest for under-20s, unlike five human participants who achieved perfect scores.<\/p>\n
IMO president Gregor Dolinar called the progress of artificial intelligence in the field “fascinating”.<\/p>\n
“When we talk about scientific calculators, in the past you needed them, but nowadays it’s easier to just ask AI,” he told AFP.<\/p>\n
“If you pose the question in the right way,” artificial intelligence can crunch abstract, logical questions and show how it reached its conclusion, Dolinar said.<\/p>\n
Dolinar, a professor in engineering at the University of Ljubljana, thinks physical calculators are likely to “slowly disappear”.<\/p>\n
Something that has already happened for his students.<\/p>\n
“They can calculate everything on a phone,” he said.<\/p>\n
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