Once Japan's major electronics company, NEC has largely withdrawn from manufacturing since the beginning of the 21st century.

Western Electric, which had an interest in the Japanese phone market, was represented by Walter Tenney Carleton.

In response, the Ministry of Communications accelerated major programs to install automatic telephone switching systems and enter radio broadcasting.

NEC participated in the installation of the automatic switching systems, ultimately becoming the general sales agent for ATM.

In the end, both papers acquired and used the NEC product, due to its faster transmission rate and higher picture quality.

Nippon supplied Japan's Ministry of Communications with nonloaded line carrier equipment for long-distance telephone channels in 1937.

The "Munitions Company Law" was passed in October 1943, placing overall control of NEC plants under military jurisdiction.

Fire bombings in April and May heavily damaged the Tamagawa Plant, reducing its capacity by forty percent.

At the end of the war, NEC's production had been substantially reduced by damage to its facilities, and by material and personnel shortages.

In September 1958, NEC built their first fully transistorized computer, the NEAC-2201, with parts made solely in Japan.

In 1963 NEC started trading as American Depositary Receipts, with ten million shares being sold in the United States.

In 1977, Japan's National Space Development Agency launched the NEC geostationary meteorological satellite, named Himawari.

They also acquired Electronic Arrays, Inc. of California the same year to start semiconductor chip production in the United States.

In 1987, NEC Technologies (UK) Ltd. was established in the United Kingdom to manufacture VCRs, printers, and computer monitors and mobile telephones for Europe.

Its prototype 3D spec successor, the Tetsujin was originally set to be released in 1992, but the lack of completed games pushed the launch date about early 1993, which was planned debut in Japan.

[37] Shortly thereafter, Magalhães resumed the government contracts and corresponding payments, and NEC Brazil became valued at over 350 million US dollars (US$350,000,000).

[37] Suspicions regarding the NEC-Globo deal, which included among other things the unilateral breach of contract by Globo founder Roberto Marinho regarding the management of a regional television station in the Brazilian state of Bahia,[37] took to the national stage only in 1992 during the first corruption charges against the impeached Brazilian president Fernando Collor de Mello.

Additionally, joint-venture agreements were established to manufacture and market digital electronic switching systems and LSIs in China.

Competition heated up later as rival Fujitsu started to aggressively market its computers, which were industry standard (x86) instead of NEC's indigenous models.

In June 1994, NEC purchased the California-based Packard Bell company to produce desktop PCs in a common manufacturing plant for the North American market.

NEC supplied Bandai's WonderSwan handheld console, which was originally developed by Gunpei Yokoi, with the V30 MZ CPU.

[42][43] In the 2000s, NEC manufactured dynamic RAM process chips and produced for the GameCube GPU, Flipper, a graphics card development by ArtX.

[53][54] In 2007, NEC and Nissan Co. Corp. started evaluating a joint venture to produce lithium ion batteries for hybrid and electric cars.

[60] On January 26, 2012, NEC Corporation announced that it would cut 10,000 jobs globally due to a big loss on NEC's consolidated financial statement in line with the economic crisis in Europe and lagged in the development of smartphones in the domestic market compared to Apple and Samsung.

Previously, in January 2009 NEC has cut about 20,000 jobs, mainly in sluggish semiconductor and liquid crystal display related businesses.

[62] In August 2014, NEC Corporation was commissioned to build a super-fast undersea data transmission cable linking the United States and Japan for a consortium of international companies consisting of China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Global Transit, Google, KDDI and SingTel.

[66] In August 2018, Envision Energy struck an agreement with Nissan and NEC to acquire their automotive battery joint venture.

[67][68][69] In December 2018, NEC announced that it would acquire KMD, the largest Danish IT company, for $1.2 billion to strengthen its digital government business.

NTT, the largest carrier in Japan, invested $596 million for a 4.8 percent stake in NEC to assist this move.

[90] These started as works teams, but over the years came to include professional players: NEC also used to own Montedio Yamagata of the football (soccer) J.