The Sony Corporation, sometimes called Soni Kabushiki-Gaisha in Japan. Is a Japanese worldwide company that is known for its products in the fields of music, electronics, telephones, computers, film, and the audiovisual industries. The company or its businesses are commonly known as Sony.
Sony Corporate includes over one hundred companies around the world, including Sony, Inc., Sony Corporation of America, Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Sony Online Entertainment.
The company was established on 7 May 1946 by Masaru Ibuka, an engineer, and Akio Morita, a physicist, employing some twenty people in a company that repaired electronic equipment and started to try and create their own products.
The name, Sony, comes from the Latin meaning SONUS sound, and then the phrase in vogue in Japan Sunny boy that means a young person with a free spirit and innovative. It was decided that a new word would be good so that later they would own the word, they also wanted a word that would be easy to say for Japanese and American consumers. Sony was able to win a lawsuit against a candy company when the company used the name Sony and claimed it was a word in a foreign language and Sony proved they had invented the word.
It was not until 1954 that the company begins to grow substantially: at that date, the company obtains a license for the manufacture of transistors, the basic electronic component. Thus, the first transistors were made in Japanese factories owned by Sony this year, 6 years after their invention in the United States. The following year, Sony is shipping the first radio receiver entirely based on transistors.
Since then, few companies have made a journey similar to that of Sony in terms of invention and innovation. Among the significant developments include the first Trinitron color television in 1968, the color videotape in 1971, the Betamax VCR in 1975, the Walkman in 1979, the micro diskette 3.5 inches in 1989, an electronic camera in 1981, the first CD player in the world in 1982, the first camcorder for the general public in 1983, 8 mm video in 1988, and so on until today.
Sony is an international company – Akio Morita was recognized from the outset that his company would consider the world as a market and not be limited to Japan. He insisted that the name Sony is clear on all the company’s products.
The giant consumer electronics industry has been experiencing difficulties since 2002: sales fell by 4.6% in 2004, partly because of competition from South Korea and China. Sony also manufactures semiconductors but for its own subsidiaries
The current President, since March 7, 2005, is the American Howard Stringer, following the resignation of Nobuyuki Idei. Headquartered in Tokyo Japan.
Revenues for all companies and subsidiaries of Sony Corporation throughout the world in 2004 amounted to over 100 billion dollars. The company has 158,500 employees worldwide as of 31 March 2006.
Sony’s share in the global consumer electronics industry was estimated in 2004 to more than 14% just behind Matsushita, Hitachi, and Philips.
In May 2008, Sony announced a record net profit of nearly 5 billion after a 2007 marked by the strong performance of its flagship products the CyberShot, Bravia, PlayStation etc.
On 9 December 2008, Sony Corporation announced a wave of layoffs affecting 8,000 employees of the firm by the year 2010 and the 30% reduction in investment in research and development to address the economic crisis and falling sales especially in the LCD market.
Works Cited:
Made in Japan- Akio Morita and Sony (pg. 76) by Akio Morita with Edwin M. Rheingold and Mitsuko Shimomura, Signet Books, 1986.
Sony: The Private Life by, John Nathan, Houghton Mifflin. (1999)
Sony Radio, Sony Transistor Radio 35th Anniversary 1955-1990 – information booklet (1990)
The Portable Radio in American Life by University of Arizona Professor Michael Brian Schiffer, Ph.D. (The University of Arizona Press, 1991).
he Japan Project: Made in Japan. – a documentary about Sony’s early history in the U.S. by, Terry Sanders
