The Korg M3 was released in 2007 and heralded by Korg as their third generation workstation. The company already proved themselves to be very capable of producing quality workstations at an affordable price, with the M1 and successors, such as the Trinity. Many thought that the OASYS, which was released just two years before the M3, would take this honor, but as groundbreaking as it was, it really couldn't be called affordable.
The M3 certainly had a lot to live up to as the M1 was simply one of the best workstations of its time. There is a good reason why it sold more units than any other workstation, but releasing the M3 at a time when people began to turn more towards DAWs shows how much faith they had in their product. However, with the M3 Korg was able to provide a synthesizer, sequencer, effects processor as well as sampler that also offered the USB connectivity needed to incorporate it in a computer based studio setup.