A brand of the world's biggest consumer corporation, Matsushita. Pioneered "organic edge design" in the late 80s, meaning that products started to have generic body like curves as oppossed to geometric designs.
Same company as Technics, National, Panavison, Panaflex and Pana-anything. Their equipment has been used in filming for ages.
Not quite as boring or planned redundancy compliant as other brands like Sony, whom tend to disable features on cheaper products and make less and less reliable laser pickups all the time.
Shop around before buying Panasonic, they only make a handful of really good products.
I have a Panasonic stereo with 400w PMPO in my Civic, which would be around 4w RMS in reality. Listen to my ghetto-bass with >5% THD at half volume.