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Public ( )
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May 7 1946 (in 1958, company took on current name)
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Shinagawa, Tokyo , Japan
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: President and Electronics CEO
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151,400
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Audio & Video Equipment financial services
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Consumer Electronics including television, digital cameras and camcorders, mobile audio and personal computers Semiconductors Electronic Components PlayStation Gaming (online) Music, Movies, and TV Program Content others
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$71216 billion USD ( 2004 )
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is
Japan ese
Multinational Corporation and one of the leading manufacturers of
Video ,
Communications , and
Information Technology products for the consumer and professional markets. Its music, motion picture, television, computer entertainment, and online businesses make Sony one of the most comprehensive entertainment companies in the world. Sony's principal U.S. businesses include Sony Electronics Inc.,
Sony Pictures Entertainment ,
Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc., and a 50% interest in
Sony BMG Music Entertainment , the second-largest record company in the world. Sony recorded consolidated annual sales of approximately $67 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2005, and it employs 151,400 people worldwide. Sony's consolidated sales in the U.S. for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2005 were $18.4 billion.
''
Masaru Ibuka, left, with Akio Morita
Masaru Ibuka could well be the person who turned Japan's electronics industry into what it is today. He was co-founder of a tiny recording company that grew into the giant Sony Corporation. But perhaps more importantly, he led the Japanese charge to make their own innovative electronic products instead of simply copying what was being done in the West. He brought transistor technology to Japan, and Sony built the first Japanese transistor radio and the world's first transistorized television set.
Ibuka was born in 1908 in Nikko City, Japan. He attended the School of Science and Engineering at Waseda University where he earned the nickname "genius inventor." When he graduated in 1933 he began working at Photo-Chemical Laboratory which recorded and processed movie film.
In 1945, after World War II, Ibuka left to start a radio repair shop in a bombed-out building in Tokyo. The next year he was joined by his colleague Akio Morita, and they founded a company called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K., which translates in English to Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation. The company built Japan's first tape recorder called the Type-G.
In the early 1950s, Ibuka was traveling in the United States and heard about Bell's invention of the transistor. He convinced Bell to license the transistor technology to his Japanese company (this is a testament both to Ibuka's persistence and scientists' openness to sharing information even so soon after the war). While most American companies researched the transistor for its military applications, Ibuka envisioned using it for communications. While Regency and Texas Instruments in the US may have built a transistor radio first, it was the Tokyo company that really invested the radio as a viable commercial product. Ibuka's company -- now named Sony, a combination of the Latin word for sound "sonus" and the chic Japanese boys of the time nicknamed "sonny" -- quickly took over the market.
Ibuka led Sony in directions that were unusual for a Japanese company at the time, as they tried to create more of their own products instead of simply modifying Western technology. In 1976, Ibuka stepped down as chairman of Sony, though he retained close connections with company as an advisor until he died of heart failure on December 19, 1997.
Resources:
- Sony's announcement of Masaru Ibuka's death
- "Sony co-founder Ibuka dies at 89," AP newswire, December 19, 1997
When
Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo was looking for a romanized name to use to market themselves, they strongly considered using their initials,
TTK . The primary reason they did not, is that the railway company
Tokyo Kyuko was known as TKK.
The name "Sony" was chosen for the brand as a mix of the
Latin word ''sonus'', which is the root of sonic and sound, the
English word "sunny", and from the word ''Sonny-boys'' which is Japanese
Slang for "
Whiz Kid s".
However "Sonny" seemed not to be appropriate since it sounds too much like the Japanese ''soh-nee'' which means ''"business goes bad"'',
Akio Morita pushed for a word that does not exist in any language so that they could claim the word "Sony" as their own (which paid off when they sued a
Candy producer who also used the name who claimed that "Sony" was just an existing word in some language).
At the time of the change, it was extremely unusual for a Japanese company to use , had strong feelings about the name. They pushed for a name such as Sony Electronic Industries, or Sony Teletech.
Akio Morita was firm, however, as he did not want the company name tied to any particular industry. Eventually, both Ibuka and Mitsui Bank's chairman gave their approval.
In August 1955, Sony produced its first coat-pocket sized
Transistor Radio they registered as the TR-55 model. In 1956, Sony reportedly manufactured about 40,000 of its Model TR-72 box-like portable transistor radios and
Export ed some of this model to
North America , the
Netherlands and
Germany .
That same year they made the TR-6, a coat pocket radio which was used by the company to create its "SONY boy"
Advertising Character . The following year, 1957, Sony came out with the TR-63 model, the then smallest (112 x 71 x 32 mm) set in commercial production. and a great sales success worldwide. The TR-63 was a shirt pocket transistor radio that was exported all over the world.
''.
- denotes a proprietary format.
Question marks indicate products no longer sold as of 2006 with an unknown year of withdrawal.
]]
- PlayStation 3 (November 2006)
- Alpha Digital SLR Cameras (Summer 2006)
Question marks indicate products no longer sold as of 2006, but the year of withdrawal is unknown
Sony is one of the few electronics companies with manufacturing and assembly plants in the United States of America.
On
March 7 2005 , Sony Corp. announced that Nobuyuki Idei will step down as Chairman and Group CEO and will be replaced by
Briton Sir
Howard Stringer , current Chairman and CEO of Sony Corporation of America, Corporate Executive Officer, Vice Chairman and COO Sony Entertainment Business Group. Sony's decision to replace Idei with the British Howard Stringer will mark the first time that a foreigner will run a major Japanese electronics firm. Sony Corp. also announced on the same date that current president, Kunitake Ando, will step down and be replaced by Ryoji Chubachi.
{Link without Title}
Sony also owns
Television channels in
India and channels aimed at Indian communities in
Europe . In Latin America, it owns
Sony Entertainment Television , a TV channel that broadcasts popular series from the major networks in the US with subtitles in Spanish and Portuguese (Brazil only).
Current members of the ,
Ryoji Chubachi ,
Sakie Fukushima ,
Hirobumi Kawano ,
Yotaro Kobayashi ,
Göran Lindahl ,
Yoshihiko Miyauchi ,
Akishige Okada ,
Howard Stringer ,
Fueo Sumita , and
Yoshiaki Yamauchi .
Sony has historically been notable for creating its own in-house standards for new recording and storage technologies instead of adopting those of other manufacturers and standards bodies. The most infamous of these was the
Videotape Format War of the early
1980s , when Sony marketed its
Betamax system for
Video Cassette Recorder s against the
VHS format developed by
JVC . In the end, VHS gained critical mass in the marketplace and became the worldwide standard for consumer VCRs and Sony adopted the format.
Since then, Sony has continued to introduce its own versions of storage technologies, with varying success. Examples include -
- /''' Hi8 '''/''' Digital8 ''' - In 1985, Sony introduced the Handycam, one of the first Video8 cameras. Much smaller than the competition's VHS and Betamax video cameras, Video8 became very popular in the consumer camcorder market.
- was created by Sony for use in portable music players. They were designed to share the market of Walkman products. Low consumer adoption has seen the product fail outside of the Japanese market.
- Sony also makes heavy use of its Memory Stick flash memory cards for digital cameras and other portable devices; however, other manufacturers are also making use of this technology.
- One successful attempt was the introduction of the 90mm micro floppy diskettes (better known as 3.5inch Floppy Disc s), which Sony had developed at a time when there were 4" floppy discs and a lot of variations from different companies to replace the then on-going 5.25" floppy discs. Sony had great success and the format became dominant; 3.5" floppy discs gradually became obsolete as they were replaced by more current media formats.
- The DVD format currently being used in households world wide was jointly developed by Philips and Sony to replace CD; the use of a shorter Wavelength Laser beam sees the higher storage capacity of 4.7-17+GB as opposed to 640-700MB on a single disc.
- Sony attempted, unsuccessfully, to compete with the Iomega Zip Drive and Imation SuperDisk with their HiFD .
- In 1993 Sony challenged the industry standard Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound format with its newer and more advanced proprietary motion picture digital audio format called SDDS (Sony Dynamic Digital Sound). This format employed eight channels (7.1) of audio opposed to just six used in Dolby Digital 5.1 at the time. Unlike Dolby Digital, SDDS utilized a method of backup by having mirrored arrays of bits on both sides of the film which acted as a measure of reliability in case the film was partially damaged. Ultimately, SDDS has been vastly overshadowed by the preferred DTS ( Digital Theatre System ) and Dolby Digital standards in the motion picture industry. SDDS was soley developed for use in the theatre circuit; Sony never intended to develop a home theatre version of SDDS.
- Since the introduction of the MiniDisc format, Sony has attempted to promote its own audio compression technologies under the ATRAC brand, against more widely-used formats like MP3. Until late 2004 , Sony's Network Walkman line of digital portable music players did not support the MP3 de facto standard natively, although the software SonicStage provided with them would convert MP3 files into the ATRAC or ATRAC3 formats.
- Sony is currently touting its Blu-ray optical digital versatile disk format, which is likely to compete with Toshiba 's HD-DVD . As of quarter one of 2006, Blu-Ray has the backing of every major motion picture studio except Universal.
- Sony and Philips jointly developed the Sony-Philips digital interface format ( S/PDIF ).
- Sony and Philips introduced the high-fidelity audio system SACD in 1999, but it has since been entrenched in a format war with DVD-Audio . At present, neither has gained a major foothold with the general public. CDs are preferred by consumers because of their ubiquitous presence in consumer devices.
- OpenMG , a Digital Rights Management system.
- ARccOS , a copy control system for DVD s.
- (UMD) is an optical disc medium developed by Sony for use on the PlayStation Portable. It can hold 1.8 gigabytes of data, which can include games, movies, music, or a combination thereof.
- (Also known as MPEG-VX, EX and HQX) is the video format used in Sony Cybershot digital still camera's. It's a proprietary implementation of the MPEG1 standard, which Sony first used in their DSC-F55 model in 1999 and has been using ever since. The format is undocumented and has only recently been reverse engineered by the company Makayama, who use it in their consumer software Digital Camera Media Studio {Link without Title} .
In July 2000, a marketing executive working for Sony Corporation created a fictitious film critic,
David Manning ,
who give consistently good reviews for releases from Sony subsidiary Columbia Pictures, which generally received poor reviews amongst real critics.
In August 2000
Sony Pictures Entertainment US senior VP
Steve Heckler foreshadowed events of late 2005. Heckler told attendees at the Americas Conference on Information Systems "The industry will take whatever steps it needs to protect itself and protect its revenue streams...It will not lose that revenue stream, no matter what...Sony is going to take aggressive steps to stop this. We will develop technology that transcends the individual user. We will firewall Napster at source - we will block it at your cable company, we will block it at your phone company, we will block it at your
{Link without Title} . We will firewall it at your PC...These strategies are being aggressively pursued because there is simply too much at stake."
In
October 2005 , it was revealed by
Mark Russinovich of
Sysinternals that
Sony BMG Music Entertainment 's music CD's had installed a
Rootkit on the user's computer as a
DRM measure (called
Extended Copy Protection by its creator, British company
First 4 Internet ), which was extremely difficult to detect or to remove. This constitutes a crime in many countries, and poses a major security risk to affected users, as well as a small drain on computer system resources. Users may even damage their computer while trying to uninstall it, a fact that drew further criticism of Sony's actions. SonyBMG is facing several class action lawsuits regarding this matter. This is discussed in detail at
2005 SonyBMG CD Copy Protection Controversy .
To commemorate the tenth anniversary of the
PlayStation (PS) gaming console in
Italy , Sony released an ad depicting a man smiling towards the camera and wearing on his head a crown made of button symbols (Triangle, O, X, Square). At the bottom, the copy read as "Ten Years of
Passion ".
This outraged the
Vatican as well as many local Catholic believers, prompting comments such as "Sony went too far" and "Vatican excommunicates Sony". After the incident, the campaign was quickly discontinued.
Sony also admitted in late 2005 to hiring
Graffiti artists to spraypaint advertisements for their
Playstation Portable game system in seven major US cities including
New York, New York ,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania , and
San Francisco, California . The mayor of Philadelphia has filed a
Cease And Desist order and may file a criminal complaint. According to Sony, they are paying businesses and building owners for the right to graffiti their walls.
{Link without Title} As of early January 2006, Sony has no plans to keep or withdraw them.
In 2002, Sony Computer Entertainment America, marketer of the popular
PlayStation game consoles, was sued by
Immersion Corp. of
San Jose ,
California which claimed that Sony's PlayStation "Dual Shock" controllers infringed on Immersion's patents. In 2004, a federal jury agreed with Immersion, awarding the company US$82 million in damages. A U.S. district court judge ruled on the matter in March, 2005 and not only agreed with the federal jury's ruling but also added another US$8.7 million in damages. ''Washington Post:''
Pay Judgment Or Game Over, Sony Warned
In November of 2005, Sony was identified as distributing aggressive
Digital Rights Management software that took on the characteristics of
Rootkits and
Spyware . In relation to the so-called
Extended Copy Protection application, Sony is already being sued in California, New York,
and Texas [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/21/AR2005112100645.html in the United States, with similar legal inquiries underway in
Canada and
Italy .
- In the 1990 movie " Crazy People " the character played by Dudley Moore and his advertising team show the successful campaign to Sony, the final of the movie shows the TV spot of the company.
- The story of Sony's foray into the American commercial market is documented in Terry Sanders ' film ''The Japan Project: Made in Japan''.
