Olivetti are to Italian product design what Apple are to North American product design.
More correctly was, and although design was important for Olivetti, technology was more important.
Just to mention few things, the
programma 101 was the first personal computer, sold
eleven years before the Apple 1, the
quaderno was the first form of netbook sold
fifteen years before the eeepc, the
envision was a mediacenter sold more than a
decade before the competitors.
BTW the stupid italians were convinced that a good product was enough to sell it, while Apple (Jobs to say better) decided to sell a religion, a more effective move.
BTW unlike Ripster says Olivetti never went out of business, but shifted its interests to services and verticalized markets, not too different from what IBM did or HP is going to do.
Very recently some consumer product were launched with the Olivetti brand, but although good products, they lack the genial part and the superb quality of the true old olivetti products.
