<figure id="attachment_3229291" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-3229291" style="width: 1600px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-3229291" src="https://media.freemalaysiatoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2093063c-epa-calculator.webp" alt="" width="1600" height="1000" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-3229291" class="wp-caption-text">In the year to March 2025, Casio sold 39 million calculators, general and scientific, in around 100 countries. (EPA Images pic)</figcaption></figure>
TOKYO: The humble pocket calculator may not be able to keep up with the mathematical capabilities of new technology, but it will never hallucinate.
The device&#8217;s enduring reliability equates to millions of sales each year for Japan&#8217;s Casio, which is even eyeing expansion in certain regions.
Despite lightning-speed advances in artificial intelligence, chatbots still sometimes stumble on basic addition.
In contrast, &#8220;calculators always give the correct answer,&#8221; Casio executive Tomoaki Sato told AFP.
But he conceded that calculators could one day go the way of the abacus.
&#8220;It&#8217;s undeniable that the market for personal calculators used in business is on a downward trend,&#8221; Sato said in Tokyo.
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.
But calculators are more affordable than phones, and run on batteries and solar power &#8212; a plus for schools in developing countries, a potential growth area for Casio, Sato said.
And people who do buy calculators prefer the way they feel, he argued.
Thitinan Suntisubpool, co-owner of a shop selling red bags and beckoning cats in Bangkok&#8217;s Chinatown, said she loves how durable her big calculator is, having dropped it several times.
&#8220;It&#8217;s more convenient in many ways,&#8221; the 58-year-old told AFP.
&#8220;We can use it to press the numbers and show the customer,&#8221; avoiding language-barrier misunderstandings.
But at a nearby street stall selling clocks, torches and calculators, the vendor, who gave her name as Da, said calculator sales were &#8220;quiet&#8221;.
&#8216;Optimised tools&#8217;
At a Casio factory in Thailand, assembly line workers slotted green circuit boards into place and popped cuboid buttons labelled &#8220;DEL&#8221; from a plastic tub onto pastel-blue calculator frames.
&#8220;Calculators are still in demand,&#8221; said Ryohei Saito, a general manager for Casio in Thailand.
&#8220;Not everywhere in the world has smartphone connectivity, and calculators are optimised tools focused on necessary functions,&#8221; he said.
In the year to March 2025, Casio sold 39 million calculators, general and scientific, in around 100 countries.
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.
The company has come a long way from the 1957 invention of the desk-sized &#8220;14-A&#8221;, which it says was the first compact all-electric calculator.
Calculator history even made headlines recently when Christie&#8217;s suspended the Paris sale of an early calculating machine, &#8220;La Pascaline&#8221;, after a court said it could not be taken abroad.
The auction house called the ebony-decorated 1642 device &#8220;the first attempt in history to substitute the human mind with a machine&#8221;.
Those attempts have accelerated with AI.
Scoring gold
In July, AI models made by Google, OpenAI and DeepSeek reached gold-level scores at the annual International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO).
But neither attained full marks at the annual contest for under-20s, unlike five human participants who achieved perfect scores.
IMO president Gregor Dolinar called the progress of artificial intelligence in the field &#8220;fascinating&#8221;.
&#8220;When we talk about scientific calculators, in the past you needed them, but nowadays it&#8217;s easier to just ask AI,&#8221; he told AFP.
&#8220;If you pose the question in the right way,&#8221; artificial intelligence can crunch abstract, logical questions and show how it reached its conclusion, Dolinar said.
Dolinar, a professor in engineering at the University of Ljubljana, thinks physical calculators are likely to &#8220;slowly disappear&#8221;.
Something that has already happened for his students.
&#8220;They can calculate everything on a phone,&#8221; he said.

MatchPoint Times

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