Kyocera Corporation, the headquarters and parent company of the global Kyocera group, was founded in 1959 in Kyoto, Japan as a start-up venture by Dr. Kazuo Inamori and seven colleagues. Kyocera's founders shared a vision of creating a company dedicated to the successful manufacture and sale of innovative, high-quality products based on advanced materials and components. Over the past six decades, this vision has resulted in a highly successful and widely diversified global enterprise. Kyocera's North American operations have contributed strongly to the company's overall success. Kyocera established our first North American sales company in 1969, a two-person operation serving Silicon Valley's burgeoning semiconductor industry and other high-tech markets throughout the United States.