(commonly known as Furuno) is a Japanese electronics company whose main products are marine electronics, including marine radar systems, fish finders, and navigational instruments. The company also manufactures

global positioning systems The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of the global navigation satellite sy ...

and

medical equipment A medical device is any device intended to be used for medical purposes. Significant potential for hazards are inherent when using a device for medical purposes and thus medical devices must be proved safe and effective with reasonable assura ...

, and entered the

weather radar Weather radar, also called weather surveillance radar (WSR) and Doppler weather radar, is a type of radar used to locate precipitation, calculate its motion, and estimate its type (rain, snow, hail etc.). Modern weather radars are mostly pulse- ...

market in 2013.

History

Furuno Electric Shokai was founded in Nagasaki, Japan in 1948. The same year, Furuno commercialized the world's first practical

fish finder Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and Chondrichthyes, cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approx ...

. Manufacturing continued to ramp up as the decade came to a close, and by the mid-1950s, Furuno was producing various Marine supplements, such as early examples of commercial Marine radars. In 1973, Furuno created an early iteration of satellite positioning receivers for vessels at sea. Later that decade, Furuno entered the United States market, establishing an HQ in the United States as Furuno USA. Following this expansion and continued growth, Furuno continued expanding their marine-based radar products. In 2009, Furuno acquired

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

based eRide, Inc., a

fabless semiconductor company Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication (or ''fab'') to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. These foundries are typically, but not exclu ...

. Following this acquisition, in 2013, Furuno introduced an X-band

, the smallest of its kind. In 2015, the company's GNSS Receiver Modules were used in radio controlled flying

quadcopter A quadcopter or quadrotor is a type of helicopter with four rotors. Although quadrotor helicopters and convertiplanes have long been flown experimentally, the configuration remained a curiosity until the arrival of the modern UAV or drone. T ...

In popular culture

Furuno's marine electronic devices has been featured in ''

Licence to Kill ''Licence to Kill'' is a 1989 spy film, the sixteenth in the ''James Bond'' series produced by Eon Productions, and the second and final film to star Timothy Dalton as the MI6 agent James Bond. It sees Bond suspended from MI6 as he pursu ...

'' (1989) as product placement.Scheidemann, Robert
"Furuno Marine Electronics in Licence To Kill (1989)"

Gallery

Notes

External links

Furuno Global page

Furuno Global page

Furuno Galicia
(in Spanish) * Wiki collection of bibliographic works on Furuno {{Authority control Electronics companies of Japan Defense companies of Japan Global Positioning System Fishing equipment manufacturers Avionics companies Marine electronics Navigation system companies Radar manufacturers Health care companies of Japan Companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Companies based in Hyōgo Prefecture Electronics companies established in 1938 1938 establishments in Japan Japanese brands