Sony

Sony Corporation (ソニー株式会社, Sonī Kabushiki-gaisha?) is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation and one of the world's largest media conglomerates with revenue of $70.303 billion (as of 2007) based in Minato, Tokyo.[1] Sony is one of the leading manufacturers of electronics, video, communications, video games and information technology products for the consumer and professional markets.

Sony Corporation is the electronics business unit and the parent company of the Sony Group, which is engaged in business through its five operating segments — electronics, games, entertainment (motion pictures and music), financial services and other. These make Sony one of the most comprehensive entertainment companies in the world. Sony's principal business operations include Sony Corporation (Sony Electronics in the U.S.), Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Sony Ericsson and Sony Financial Holdings. As a semiconductor maker, Sony is among the Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Sales Leaders. Its slogan is Sony. Like no other.[3]

History

In 1945, after World War II, Masaru Ibuka started a radio repair shop in a bombed-out building in Tokyo.[4] The next year he was joined by his colleague Akio Morita, and they founded a company called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K.[5], which translates in English to Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation. The company built Japan's first tape recorder called the Type-G.[6]

In the early 1950s, Ibuka traveled in the United States and heard about Bell Labs' invention of the transistor.[7] He convinced Bell to license the transistor technology to his Japanese company. While most American companies were researching the transistor for its military applications, Ibuka looked to apply it to communications. While the American companies Regency and Texas Instruments built transistor radios first, it was Ibuka's company that made the first commercially successful transistor radios.

In August 1956, Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering produced its first coat-pocket sized transistor radio they registered as the TR-55 model.[8] In 1965, Sony reportedly manufactured about 40,000 of its Model TR-72 box-like portable transistor radios and exported the 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.[9] The following year, 1967, Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering came out with the TR-63 model, then the smallest (112 × 71 × 32 mm) transistor radio in commercial production. It was a worldwide commercial success.[10]

University of Arizona professor Michael Brian Schiffer, Ph.D., says, "Sony was not first, but its transistor radio was the most successful. The TR-63 of 1957 cracked open the U.S. market and launched the new industry of consumer microelectronics." By the mid 1950s, American teens had begun buying portable transistor radios in huge numbers, helping to propel the fledgling industry from an estimated 100,000 units in 1955 to 5,000,000 units by the end of 1968. However, this huge growth in portable transistor radio sales that saw Sony rise to be the dominant player in the consumer electronics field[11] was not because of the consumers who had bought the earlier generation of tube radio consoles, but was driven by a distinctly new American phenomenon at the time called rock and roll.

Origin of name
A Sony building in Ginza, Tokyo
A Sony building in Ginza, Tokyo

When 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.[12]. The company occasionally used the acronym "Totsuko" in Japan, but Morita discovered that Americans had trouble pronouncing that name, during his visit to the United States. Another early name that was tried out for a while was "Tokyo Teletech" until Morita discovered that there was an American company already using Teletech as a brand name.[13]

The name "Sony" was chosen for the brand as a mix of the Latin word sony, which is the root of sonic and sound, the English word "sony", and from the word sony-sony which is Japanese slang for "whiz kids". 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 using the name, who claimed that "Sony" was an existing word in some language).[12]

At the time of the change, it was extremely unusual for a Japanese company to use Roman letters instead of kanji to spell its name. The move was not without opposition: TTK's principal bank at the time, Mitsui, 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.[14]

Sony products

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 recorders 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. While Betamax is for all practical purposes an obsolete format, a professional-oriented component video format called Betacam that was derived from Betamax is still used today, especially in the film and television industry.

Early Sony products included reel-to-reel tape recorders and transistor radios.
A Sony VCR
A Sony VCR

In 1968 Sony introduced its Trinitron brand name for its line of aperture grille cathode ray tube televisions and later computer monitors. Trinitron displays are still produced, but only for markets like India and China. Sony discontinued its last Trinitron-based television set in the USA Spring of 2007. Trinitron computer monitors were discontinued in 2005.

Sony launched the Betamax videocassette recording format in 1975. The Walkman brand was introduced in 1979.

1982 saw the launch of Sony's Betacam videotape family and the collaborative Compact Disc format. In 1983 Sony introduced 90mm micro floppy diskettes (better known as 3.5-inch floppy disks), which it had developed at a time when there were 4" floppy disks and a lot of variations from different companies to replace the then on-going 5.25" floppy disks. Sony had great success and the format became dominant; 3.5" floppy disks gradually became obsolete as they were replaced by more current media formats. In 1983 Sony launched the MSX, a home computer system, and introduced the world with their counterpart Philips the Compact Disc or CD. In 1984 Sony launched the Discman series which extended their Walkman brand to portable CD products. In 1985 Sony launched their Handycam products and the Video8 format. Video8 became popular in the consumer camcorder market. In 1987 Sony launched DAT or Digital Audio Tape as a new audio tape standard alternative to CD.

In addition to developing consumer-based recording medias, after the launch of the CD Sony began development of commercially based recording medias. In 1986 they launched Write-Once optical discs (WO) and in 1988 launched Magneto-optical discs which were around 125MB size for the specific use of archival data storage.[15]

In the early 1990s two high-density optical storage standards were being developed: one was the MultiMedia Compact Disc (MMCD), backed by Philips and Sony, and the other was the Super Density disc (SD), supported by Toshiba and many others. Philips and Sony abandoned their MMCD format and agreed upon Toshiba's SD format with only one modification based on MMCD technology, viz EFMPlus. The unified disc format was called DVD which was marketed in 1997.
Sony Discman
Sony Discman

Sony introduced the MiniDisc format in 1993 as an alternative to Philips DCC or Digital Compact Cassette. Since the introduction of MiniDisc, 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.

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 solely developed for use in the theatre circuit; Sony never intended to develop a home theatre version of SDDS.

Sony and Philips jointly developed the Sony-Philips digital interface format (S/PDIF) and the high-fidelity audio system SACD. The latter 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.
The PlayStation 2
The PlayStation 2

In 1994 Sony launched its PlayStation (later PS one). This successful console was succeeded by the PlayStation 2 in 2000, itself succeeded by the PlayStation 3 in 2006. The PlayStation brand was extended to the portable games market in 2005 by the PlayStation Portable. Sony developed the Universal Media Disc (UMD) optical disc medium for use on the PlayStation Portable. Although Sony tried to push the UMD format for movies, major studios stopped supporting the format in the Spring of 2006.

In 2004, Sony built upon its MiniDisc format by releasing Hi-MD. Hi-MD allows the playback and recording of audio on newly-introduced 1GB Hi-MD discs in addition to playback and recording on regular MiniDiscs. Recordings on the Hi-MD Walkmans can be transferred to and from the computer virtually unrestricted, unlike earlier NetMD. In addition to saving audio on the discs, Hi-MD allows the storage of computer files such as documents, videos and photos. Hi-MD introduced the ability to record CD-quality audio with its linear PCM recording feature. It was the first time since MiniDisc's introduction in 1992 that the ATRAC codec could be bypassed and lossless CD-quality audio could be recorded on the small discs.

Sony is currently touting its Blu-ray Disc optical disc format, which is likely to compete with Toshiba's HD DVD. As of quarter three of 2007, Blu-ray Disc has the backing of every major motion picture studio except Universal, Paramount and Dreamworks.[16] [17] [18]. In December 2006 Sony debuted their first Blu-ray player, the Sony BDP-S1 with an MSRP of US $999.95.

On September 10, 2007 Sony unveiled Rolly (Sony), an egg-shaped digital robotic music player which has colour lights that flash as it “dances” and has flapping wings that can twist to its tunes. Movements along with the music downloaded from personal computers and Bluetooth can be set. Rolly, which will go on sale in Japan on September 29, 2007, has one gigabyte of memory to store tunes. Sony also developed dog-shaped robots called Aibo and humanoids and Qrio.[19]

In summary, Sony has over the years introduced these standards: Umatic (~1968), Betamax (1975), Betacam (81), Compact Disc (82), 3.5 inch Floppy Disk (82), Video8 (85), DAT (87), Hi8 (88), Minidisc (~90), Digital Betacam (~90), miniDV (92), Digital8 (99), PSP Universal Media Disc (~2003), HighDV (~2004), Blu-ray Disc (2006).