Looking at the changes in keyboards over the years, is CHERRY still the dominant player?

In fact, the development of keyboard shafts has been going on for so many years, from initially only mechanical keyboards to fully expanding the market with membrane keyboards, and then to the competition between mechanical keyboards and membrane keyboards. In this development process, we all have to mention a company - CHERRY, especially in the field of mechanical keyboards. When it comes to mechanical keyboards, the first image that comes to my mind is CHERRY. I don't know if I have this feeling, but after so many years of development, is CHERRY still the dominant company in mechanical keyboards?

The initial keyboard

Since we're talking about keyboards, we have to talk about the old joke typewriter. The original out of order QWERTY keyboard evolved from typewriters. In 1874, the typewriter of the American Sholes&Gordon Company officially entered the market. At that time, typewriters were fiercely competitive, and the key layout was also very rich and diverse. The United States has a QWERTY layout, France has an AZERTY layout, Italy has a QZERTY layout, and Germany also has a QWERTZ layout. But why do these Latin languages have to use an unordered layout when the 26 sequential letters (A-Z) are properly arranged?

Due to the imperfect mechanical technology at that time, the rebound speed of the keys after hitting was slow. Once the typist hit the keys too fast, it was easy for two keys to become tangled together. Typists must carefully separate and restore them with their hands, which seriously affects the speed of text input.

So people came up with a way to reduce the occurrence of key twisting by using "out of order" characters. However, this design will inevitably lead to low efficiency in inputting characters (compared to sequential typewriters that do not experience key twisting). This "disorderly" design is not really about randomly arranging the positions of keys, but rather about making the key layout as convenient as possible while ensuring a low probability of collision inside the typewriter. After a series of market strategy battles, the QWERTY layout typewriter finally won history.

The design concept of the keyboard is in line with that of the typewriter, which is now the reference model for keyboards. Early typewriters relied on tapping levers corresponding to different characters, with the protruding front end of the lever leaving marks on the solid ink ribbon and paper used for copying. The current keyboard also uses keystrokes to turn on the circuit board. Different positions on the circuit board generate various specific signals. After the computer recognizes the signals, it converts them into Latin characters that we can recognize through ASCII and displays them on the screen. Our input method then compiles Latin characters into various non Latin characters. Excluding the compilation stage, the input text on the keyboard is indeed the same as that of a typewriter.

The emergence of mechanical axis keyboard

The essence of a keyboard is a series of switches. With the development of inherited circuits and the electronics industry, it also needs to be replaced as an input device. The idea of adding switches to a PCB board is actually similar to that of a typewriter, so this type of keyboard emerged. Let's not talk about the axis being too old, let's start with getting familiar with CHERRY.

In the 1970s, with the arrival of the personal computer wave, Cherry introduced a keyboard production line in 1967 and built the world's first keyboard factory, ZF Electronics. Other keyboard manufacturers of the same period included Key Tronic, IBM (when referring to computers at that time, it was basically equivalent to IBM, and Apple was in the 1980s), Cherry, and so on. In the 1970s, keyboards were very bulky and large, essentially because the switches were too large (nowadays keyboards are much lighter). In the early 1980s, after fierce competition among keyboard switch manufacturers, Cherry and Alps were the main ones left. Alps gradually lost market share due to unsatisfactory tactile feedback and ultimately withdrew from the keyboard switch market.

Afterwards, CHERRY devoted itself to the production of keyboards and shafts.

Let's not talk about the early axis bodies M5 and M7 before MX axis, let's talk about the MX axis that we are familiar with.

MX Black Black was born in 1984.

MX Blue Blue was born in 1987.

MX Brown tea stem was born in 1992.

The MX Red axis was born in 2008.

MX RGB was born in 2014.

The MX Slient Silent Shaft was released in 2015.

2018 MX Lightweight RGB Axis Appears at 2018 CES

The Development History of Keyboard

If we count from the 1970s until now, the keyboards we are familiar with have gone through more than 40 years and nearly 50 years. From the initial 1970s to the 1990s, people could only choose mechanical axis keyboards, and only mechanical axis keyboards could be selected. The advantages are durability and first-class feel, but the disadvantage is that the price is expensive. However, expensive is only for ordinary people. After all, a personal computer in the 1980s costs 20000 RMB and a keyboard costs 500 RMB. Does this make it look less expensive compared to others? (I remember that the original Little Overlord learning machine still used a mechanical shaft.)

In the 1990s, there was an explosive development in the integrated circuit and electronics industries, especially after the millennium, when personal computers became popular rapidly and prices couldn't climb, to the point where every household could have a desktop computer. At this moment, the membrane keyboard appeared. The membrane keyboard replaces the previous bulky P multiple mechanical switches with a silicone membrane, and generates digital signals by directly tapping the PCB board with a silicone bowl and a metal bowl. At that time, the price of film keyboards was low, the assembly difficulty was low, and the processing difficulty was low, especially for domestically produced film keyboards, which could even reach 20 yuan RMB. But there are significant drawbacks: short lifespan because silicone is prone to aging.

From beginning to end, the feel of the membrane keyboard is not as good as that of a mechanical keyboard, but it cannot withstand being cheap, after all, in that era, price was the key. When I first came into contact with PCs, film keyboards had already taken over this market. Mechanical keyboards, on the other hand, rely on the industrial market and a few high-end esports markets to survive.

Around 2005, mechanical keyboards basically disappeared from the keyboard market. The Cherry MX production line continues to shrink, but Cherry still retains the production line and has not completely cut it off, which is crucial for the future recovery of mechanical keyboards. Before 2006, Cherry mechanical keyboards and their OEM keyboards were mainly sold to enterprises, with customers mainly concentrated in industries such as industry, banking, securities, insurance, healthcare, postal services, telecommunications, and government. B2C sales to individual retailers are very rare. It can be said that CHERRY was extremely miserable at that time.

The turning point occurred around 2006 when Sairui purchased CHERRY MX switches and developed a 6G keyboard, which was introduced to the gaming market. At that time, it was highly praised by CS (Counter Strike) players who were at their peak. It was precisely due to the drive of CS players that Cherry was introduced to China, although initially due to high prices, sales were particularly low. But later on, various peripheral manufacturers saw the potential of mechanical keyboards in the gaming market and cooperated with CHERRY, using CHERRY MX axis keyboards to continuously emerge. In my impression, Ducky, Filco, Logitech, Sairui, Razer Rosewill、i-rocks、 Kaiku, wait.

Especially around 2014, with the rise of the esports industry, mechanical keyboards ushered in a complete spring. So far, keyboards have roughly been divided into three camps: mechanical keyboards, membrane keyboards, and very niche electrostatic keyboards.

The current debate over mechanical shafts

So far, there are many types of shafts that we can see on the keyboard, and we have many choices. However, with the expiration of CHERRY's patent protection and the continuous improvement of domestic shaft technology, domestic shafts now have the ability to compete with CHERRY in certain markets.

But it's not just limited to imitating CHERRY MX shafts. There are also many innovations in domestic shafts. The emergence of BOX shafts, optical axes, and lightweight shafts is indeed a new product made by domestic manufacturers after careful consideration of the market: the optical axis can obtain lower latency and faster response, BOX has an independent sound structure to reduce the impact on hand feel, and the lightweight and thin characteristics of the lightweight shaft are targeted at office and gaming laptops.

Omron has always been a major switch manufacturer, and its shaft body is an independent small switch. In recent years, it has cooperated with Logitech to use Omron shafts in Logitech's high-end products. Recently, Rapoo also tasted the freshness of Omron shafts on a keyboard, which feels more like a tea shaft. Personally, I feel that it is before the tea shaft and red shaft. The advantage is good workmanship, uniform light transmission at the center of the shaft, and no light leakage.

Summary

Based on the current market, most institutional companies purchase and use film keyboards for office use, which have low costs. But the successful recovery of mechanical keyboards has also shown many office, coding, gaming, and text workers the advantages of mechanical keyboards, and keyboards priced in the hundreds have gained recognition for their dual advantages of feel and lifespan. When we talk about keyboards now, we can basically ignore film keyboards (CHERRY also has film keyboards) and niche static capacitors. As for mechanical keyboards, the continuous innovation of domestic shaft bodies has even forced CHERRY to launch ultra-thin shaft bodies.