SolveYourProblem Article Series: Sony Playstation, TV's & Other Products
What's So Cool About Sony?
How
Sony Got Its Start
The
Sony Corporation has become a global powerhouse in the
electronics and entertainment industry and as a multinational
corporation. A Japanese corporation headquartered in Tokyo,
Sony is a global manufacturer of electronics, communication
products, videos and video games, and information technology
both for consumers and professionals. Sony is also among the
world’s top 20 semiconductor sales leaders. The global powerhouse
employs 158,500 people and has consolidated annual sales revenue
of $67 billion for the fiscal year that ended in March 2005.
Let’s find out how this media giant got its start.
Following World War II, Masaru Ibuka, nicknamed the “genius
inventor,” turned a bomb-out building in Tokyo into a radio
repair shop. The following year, Akio Morita joined him and
they founded a company called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K., which
translates into Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation.
Their company invented Japan’s first tape recorder and called
it the Type-G.
During a trip to the United States in the early 1950s, Masaru
Ibuka learned about the inventor of the transistor by Bell
Labs. Ibuka bought the license for the transistor technology
for Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation. Ibuka
intended to apply the transistor technology to the field of
communications rather than to the military applications for
which his American counterparts were interested. Thus, in 1955,
Ibuka invented the first commercially successful transistor
radio.
Named the TR-55, the new transistor radio was small enough
to be carried in a coat pocket. In 1956, Ibuka and his partner
marketed about 40,000 of a larger although still portable transistor
radio called the TR-72, which was exported to North America,
the Netherlands, and Germany. The following year saw the introduction
of the smallest model, the TR-63, which became an immediate
worldwide success.
Now that the Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation
had got its start, the need for a more marketable name became
apparent. From the Latin word Sonus, which is the root word
of “sonic” and sound” and from the English word sunny, and
from the Japanese slang of Sonny-boys, which translates as
“whiz kids,” came the brand name “Sonny.” Too similar to the
Japanese saying soh-nee, meaning “business goes bad,” Akio
Morita invented the word “Sony”—one that the company could
claim as its very own.
By 1958, Sony saw its demand for its portable transistor radios
increase from about 100,000 units in 1955 to a mind-boggling
5 million. Carried by more and more American teenagers, the
radios were timed perfectly with the popular introduction of
rock and roll.
From transistor radios in the 1950s, Sony moved on to being
one of the leaders in the development of televisions and portable
recording devices in the late 1960s. In the 1970s, Sony innovated
the videocassette, shortwave radio, and to great acclaim, the
Walkman, among other products. The 1980s found Sony working
on the compact disc, computer workstation, Discman, and computer
diskettes. In the 1990s, Sony introduced such common household
brands as the Playstation, soon to be branded the PS1, Aibo
(Artificial Intelligence roBOt), an interative, robotic pet,
and the Memory Stick, the flash memory card licensed to many
other companies. This decade has Sony still working as a global
powerhouse in the entertainment and electronics industry. Its
latest Playstation, the PS3, with a rollout scheduled for November
2006, has people clogging Internet retailers for pre-orders
at $499 a piece.
Anyone who has ever watched a good color television, used
an SLR camera to take photos, or listened to music stored in
their back pocket has Sony to thanks for leading the way in
the invention of some of the world’s most popular entertainment
tools. While Sony got its start in a bombed-out building, it
has risen to a world powerhouse on whose shoulders many other
technology giants have stood.
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SolveYourProblem.com
: 2008
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