Wacom

The company was founded in 1983 by Azuma Murakami. Dissatisfied by a corded digitizer on the photo typesetting machine he used while working at the Unification Church affiliated newspaper Sekai Nippo, Murakami fabricated a cordless digitizer on his own time and brought it to market. Murakami was later forced out of his role in July 1997 following an internal power struggle over church ties.

The name Wacom came from an abbreviated variation of World Computer (Japanese: ワールドコンピュータ, wārudo konpyūtā), with the syllable "wa" (和, Japanese for "harmony").

Wacom demonstrated a hand-drawing system at SIGGRAPH in 1987. Walt Disney Animation Studios became an early major customer, using the company's tablets on The Rescuers Down Under and Beauty and the Beast (1991).

Wacom was the first company to make pens without a cord, which it introduced in 1991; it released its first pen display the following year. Its products were initially targeted at professional artists, but by the late 1990s it aimed to expand to home users as well.

In 1996, U.S. president Bill Clinton used a Wacom pen to sign the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

In 2001, the company partnered with Sony to introduce a Vaio laptop with built-in touch functionality.

The company was listed on JASDAQ in 2003. For the fiscal year ending in 2004 it reported sales of ¥17.6 billion, about 70 percent of it from outside Japan, and employed some 450 people.

Microsoft used Wacom digitizers in the first two generations of its Surface Pro tablets but switched to the competing N-trig system with the Surface Pro 3 in 2014, and acquired N-trig the following year.

Products

Wacom produces two categories of graphics tablets: those with a screen ('pen display') and those without ('tablet'). In addition, the company provides software for computers and software to interpret pen data. Some pens have an eraser on the rear end.

Cintiq

Wacom's professional pen displays are under the Cintiq line. They allow for drawing directly on the screen, like drawing on paper, and are more expensive than other Wacom products. The Cintiq Companion is a portable variant of the Cintiq displays.

Intuos

Intuos graphics tablets do not have displays. The first version was introduced in 1999, replacing the earlier ArtZ line. It is available in an entry-level version and the more advanced Intuos Pro. In 2018, The Verge called the entry-level models a "great introduction to digital art". The Intuos Pro was redesigned in 2025, moving the ExpressKeys from the side of the tablet to its top edge and replacing the touch ring with dials.

One

The One series of products is targeted at beginners, and features versions both with and without screens. The One tablet, released at CES 2020, has a 13-inch, 1920x1080 display. The Verge labeled it as Wacom's "most affordable tablet to date", being priced at $400.

Criticism

The company has received criticism for collection of user data, which Wacom says is "for quality assurance and development purposes", where the data is anonymized.

In early 2024, the company was criticised by artists for using AI-generated images in its advertising material. The company replied in a post on its blogs on January 9, stating that "using AI generated images in these assets was not our intent" and that the images came from a third-party vendor.