Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita, founders of Sony.
Sony began in the wake of World War II. In 1946, Masaru Ibuka started
an electronics shop in a department store building in Tokyo. The company
started with a capital of 190,000 and a total of eight employees. On 7 May
1946, Ibuka was joined by Akio Morita to establish a company called Tokyo
Tsushin Kogyo (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation). The
company built Japan's first tape recorder, called the Type-G. In 1958, the
company changed its name to "Sony". Name
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 TTK. The company
occasionally used the acronym "Totsuko" in Japan, but during his visit to
the United States, Morita discovered that Americans had trouble
pronouncing that name. Another early name that was tried out for a while
was "Tokyo Teletech" until Akio Morita discovered that there was an
American company already using Teletech as a brand name.
The name
"Sony" was chosen for the brand as a mix of two words: one was the Latin
word "sonus", which is the root of sonic and sound, and the other was
"sonny", a common slang term used in 1950s America to call a young boy. In
1950s Japan, "sonny boys" was a loan word in Japanese, which connoted
smart and presentable young men, which Sony founders Akio Morita and
Masaru Ibuka considered themselves to be.
The first Sony-branded
product, the TR-55 transistor radio, appeared in 1955 but the company name
did not change to Sony until January 1958.
At the time of the
change, it was extremely unusual for a Japanese company to use Roman
letters to spell its name instead of writing it in kanji. 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.
Globalization
Sony TR-730 transistor radio made in Japan circa 1960
According
to Schiffer, Sony's TR-63 radio "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 million units by the end of 1968.[citation needed]
Sony
co-founder Akio Morita founded Sony Corporation of America in 1960. In the
process, he was struck by the mobility of employees between American
companies, which was unheard of in Japan at that time. When he returned to
Japan, he encouraged experienced, middle-aged employees of other companies
to reevaluate their careers and consider joining Sony. The company filled
many positions in this manner, and inspired other Japanese companies to do
the same. Moreover, Sony played a major role in the development of Japan
as a powerful exporter during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. It also helped
to significantly improve American perceptions of "made in Japan" products.
Known for its production quality, Sony was able to charge above-market
prices for its consumer electronics and resisted lowering prices.
In 1971, Masaru Ibuka handed the position of president over to his
co-founder Akio Morita. Sony began a life insurance company in 1979, one
of its many peripheral businesses. Amid a global recession in the early
1980s, electronics sales dropped and the company was forced to cut prices.
Sony's profits fell sharply. "It's over for Sony," one analyst
concluded. "The company's best days are behind it." Around that time,
Norio Ohga took up the role of president. He encouraged the development of
the Compact Disc in the 1970s and 1980s, and of the PlayStation in the
early 1990s. Ohga went on to purchase CBS Records in 1988 and Columbia
Pictures in 1989, greatly expanding Sony's media presence. Ohga would
succeed Morita as chief executive officer in 1989. Under the vision of
co-founder Akio Morita and his successors, the company had aggressively
expanded into new businesses. Part of its motivation for doing so was the
pursuit of "convergence," linking film, music and digital electronics via
the Internet.
This expansion proved unrewarding and unprofitable,
threatening Sony's ability to charge a premium on its products as well as
its brand name. In 2005, Howard Stringer replaced Nobuyuki Idei as chief
executive officer, marking the first time that a foreigner had run a major
Japanese electronics firm. Stringer helped to reinvigorate the company's
struggling media businesses, encouraging blockbusters such as Spider-Man
while cutting 9,000 jobs. He hoped to sell off peripheral business and
focus the company again on electronics. Furthermore, he aimed to increase
cooperation between business units, which he described as "silos"
operating in isolation from one another. In a bid to provide a unified
brand for its global operations, Sony introduced a slogan known as
"make.believe" in 2009.
(From the
excellent
https://www.audio-high-store.com/sony-ta-f650es/ site) |