Morisawa Inc. (president and CEO: Akihiko Morisawa; headquarters: 2-6-25 Shikitsu Higashi, Naniwa-ku, Osaka; Main: 06-6649-2151; "Morisawa") is pleased to announce that an agreement has been reached to acquire a majority stake in Arphic Technology Co., Ltd. (CEO: Grace Yang; headquarters: New Taipei City, Taiwan; "Arphic").

Since Morisawa and Arphic established a business alliance in November 2011, the companies have maintained close ties. Examples of this partnership have included providing Arphic’s Chinese fonts for the MORISAWA PASSPORT font licensing solution and TypeSquare web font service. The decision to acquire a majority stake follows a capital tie-up in August 2013, when Morisawa acquired 16% of the outstanding shares of Arphic.

Growing online and digital availability of all kinds of services in recent years has driven demand for fonts, whether embedded in devices or software or in other applications. There is also a greater need for multilingual fonts, both domestically and internationally, from the standpoint of globalization and diversity. This has set the stage for the current agreement, through which Morisawa seeks closer ties with Arphic in developing Chinese fonts and building on synergies between the companies.

To date, Arphic has developed more than 700 Traditional and Simplified Chinese fonts. Besides fonts for Japanese, Korean, and European languages, the foundry has also developed multilingual fonts. With Arphic as a new group member, Morisawa is an even better one-stop source for those who need multilingual fonts with an emphasis on Japanese and Chinese.

As a Morisawa subsidiary, Arphic will continue to develop fonts and provide existing font services, strengthening its leading role in the Chinese font market.

The Chinese characters in common to our written languages put us on the same page in font development. There's a synergy that's readily available. By building on more than a decade of ties with Arphic, soon the Group may also be able to create business synergies.

Arphic and Morisawa have been working together for more than 10 years, focusing on development for the Chinese and Japanese side, respectively. Through our new alliance, we'll be able to apply our respective strengths to create fonts that are both innovative and compelling in quantity and quality. As we continue to expand font sales together, we will be pursuing the shared goal of enhancing society through typography.

Aspiring to enhance society through typography, Morisawa has been a type foundry engaged in font R&D since inventing the world's first phototypesetting machine for Japanese text in 1924. Besides font licensing solutions with more than 1,500 Japanese and multilingual fonts, Morisawa products and services include web fonts, embedded fonts, and tools for distributing information in multilingual formats applying universal design principles. Designed for legibility and readability, UD fonts developed by Morisawa were distinguished with a Good Design Award in 2009. In addition to providing Japanese and multilingual fonts, Morisawa also reports on comparative legibility and readability research conducted with third-party organizations.

Established in 1990, Arphic excels at font design and has a wealth of experience in developing multi-script fonts used for Chinese and many other languages. Arphic provides an array of font solutions for enterprises, designers, and other users, offering embedded fonts, custom fonts, web fonts, and more. iFontCloud is an Arphic cloud font service with more than 1,500 fonts and 220 families, including Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Japanese, and multilingual fonts, as well as web fonts and variable fonts.
Explore AR UD JingXiHei, honored with a Good Design Best 100 award in 2013. 
Arphic font libraries have also won many awards, including Red Dot Award: Brands & Communication Design 2020 and iF Design Award 2022.

Tokyo Head Office, Public Relations Section, Brand Communication Department, Morisawa Inc.
Email: pr@morisawa.co.jp