Cherry gives up German production and wants to sell core division
19 comments
·November 27, 2025ch_123
stockresearcher
> Cherry kept making the same product line which they had since the 1980s, with relatively minor improvements.
Cherry was an American company that manufactured in the US and the 1980s is approximately when the automotive division was sold to a German company with keyboard switches thrown in. They moved production to Germany to capitalize on the perception of German quality. So, it’s not really surprising that it stagnated - it was a somewhat unwanted portion of a company and all the original folks got left behind.
donquichotte
Interesting, do you have any examples of the latter two categories? Looking for a replacement for my Cherry-Keyboard.
chasil
I found a mini-keyboard from dealnews.com for $20 with multicolor LEDs, that seems reliable.
I found another at Best Buy with red LEDs, but otherwise similar, and I gave it to my coworker. He wore all the letters off the keycaps, but it was otherwise reliable.
I think these were both blue switch-based.
Several genuine Cherry keyboards were in the e-waste pile at work, so I rescued them. I am using one on a test PC with rhel8.
Ekaros
I think magnetic hall-effect switches in standard keyboard are interesting innovation. Basically allows you to tune at what point of key press they activate.
TheChaplain
Well, there's Gateron and Keychron.. But from what I gather Cherry still are considered the choice if you want longevity.
Ekaros
Bought first board with swappable switches this month. And bit later about 70 different samples from Ali. Just the cheer quantity of that number is crazy to me.
Have to figure out if there is anything there when they arrive. But I think that is not even inclusive of some more expensive chinese brands.
Still, it is another interesting example how something can end up standard. That is the pin layout and the stem for keycap.
jsheard
> Just the cheer quantity of that number is crazy to me.
The count is a bit inflated because different colorways of the same design by the same manufacturer are often sold as "different" switches, but even if you filter those duplicates out there's still a ton of distinct ones out there.
casenmgreen
Historically, before I went to laptop, I always bought Cherry.
I was looking for a portable external keeb recently, and I looked to Cherry and they simply had nothing which even approximately matched the form factor I needed. I wanted to buy from them, but couldn't.
null
constantcrying
At this point it seems inevitable that most of Europe is going to experience severe economic struggles.
Manufacturing in Germany is dying, making anything which is cost competitive is impossible and the measures trying to fix it are miniscule compared to the magnitude of the problem.
dinkblam
> Manufacturing in Germany is dying
no surprise given the high taxes, extreme energy prices, massive bureaucracy, ridiculous regulations, work-hating employees and extremely business-hostile culture
cdmckay
I think it’s mostly the loss of Nord Stream
AlexandrB
It's the loss of Germany's last nuclear plants in 2023[1]. For a country supposedly aiming for net zero the shutdown of their nuclear infrastructure was a huge "own goal". Really sad to see.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/15/europe/germany-nuclear-phase-...
mertbio
Germany doesn’t compete in cheap manufacturing, they compete in highly precise manufacturing. There are bunch of things that are only manufactured in Germany. You don’t hear those companies that much because they are not public but they are well known by the people who work in specific industries. When you combine them, they are way bigger than the German companies you hear everyday which are laying off people or closing factories.
For some reason, every time Europe is mentioned, there is always a comment about how Europe is struggling but when you look at the quality of life, happiness or life expectancy, all those numbers are higher than the US. People should stop obsessing with GDP.
constantcrying
I know many of these companies and I have even been invited to some of them.
I am not some American desperate to insult Europeans. I am a German, I work in the German industry, my livelihood depends on this economy.
>When you combine them, they are way bigger than the German companies you hear everyday which are laying off people or closing factories.
This plainly is not true. Even the "small champions" are struggling, because they are mostly suppliers to the large companies. A very significant part of the "Mittelstand" exists as specialized suppliers to the German car, Aerospace and Railway companies. If those are struggling, then the suppliers feel the pain just as much.
pfannkuchen
Just stop trading manufactured products with Asia.
Their people are still transitioning from agrarian hardship to urban factory life, and there seems to be a zeal that comes with this transition, a willingness to work hard for what here today would be considered little.
Good for them. But in Europe we had this transition already and we became disillusioned with the lifestyle tradeoffs.
Having our people do nothing productive while all of our life objects are made by others is not sustainable and it is awful for the morale of our peoples. It needs to be stopped.
dinkblam
> It needs to be stopped.
forcing germans to buy everything at 10 times of what it costs now is not the way to rescue the country
pfannkuchen
Can you please think through what would happen a bit further? What you say here is a first order analysis on a very short time scale. It does not capture the end state of such a change. The acceptable transition period for a change depends on the severity of the problem the change is targeting, and in this case here the problem is quite severe, so our acceptable transition period should at least be measured in half decades, not weeks.
A little over a decade ago, the patents expired on the MX switch design. The first clones (mostly from China) were cheap and terrible. Then came the ones which were cheap and almost as good. Then came the ones which were better than the originals, and eventually the ones which were more innovative too.
Meanwhile, Cherry kept making the same product line which they had since the 1980s, with relatively minor improvements.