The Japanese inventor Tokuji Hayakawa founded Sharp Corporation in Tokyo in 1912 for the manufacture of belt buckles. The company took its name from one of the first inventions it produced, the 'Ever-Sharp' mechanical pencil, invented in 1915. The company's Tokyo premises were destroyed in the Great Kanto earthquake in 1923. Sharp relocated to Osaka and established itself at the Hayakawa Metal Works in 1924. With its pencil business destroyed, the company began manufacturing radios in 1925. It later moved into the manufacture of television receivers in 1953, before shifting into the development and production of electronic calculators in 1964. The company introduced the first pocket calculator in 1969.

Sharp Corporation's reinvention as an electronics company led to its core technologies and products including LCD panels, solar panels, mobile phones, audio-visual entertainment equipment, video projectors, Multi-Function Printing Devices, microwave ovens, cash registers, CMOS and CCD sensors, and flash memory. The company was responsible for the first commercial camera phone for the Japanese market in November 2000 and the world's first commercially available 8K television in 2015.

Poor financial performance from 2012 resulted in Sharp Corporation becoming majority owned by the Taiwanese Foxconn Group in 2016, although it still trades under the Sharp name.