Sony was founded on May 7, 1946 under the name Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering with about 20 employees. Their first consumer product is a rice cooker in the late 1940s. Along with the development of Sony as a large international company, he bought another company that has a longer history, including Columbia Records (the label of the oldest extant, founded in 1888).
When the Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo was looking for names that have been romanized (not in Japan or written language) to market their company, they strongly considered using their abbreviations, TTK. The reason they did not, is there railway company Tokyo Kyuko was known as TKK.
The name "Sony" was chosen as joint sonus Latin word, which is the root of sonic and sound, and the English word sonny ("child") that after the combined means of a small group of young people who have energy and willpower to creation and innovation of ideas that do not terbataskan. At that time, it is very odd for a Japanese company to use Roman letters to spell his name, let alone the use of phonetic characters used in Japanese writing (instead of using Chinese characters). And in 1958 the company began to formally adopt the name "Sony Corporation" as the name of the company. Easy to use and easily pronounced in all languages of the world. Sony's name echoes the spirit of freedom and openness in innovation.
This step is getting opposition: TTK bank which is a sponsor at the time, Mitsui has a strong persaan of the name. They wanted a name such as Sony Electronic Industries, or Sony Teletech. Akio Morita was firm, because he did not want the company name associated with any particular industry. Finally, the Chairman and President Masaru Ibuka Bandai gave its approval.
In 1988, Sony bought CBS (Columbia) Records Group from CBS. He was later named "Sony Music Entertainment".
In 2000, Sony had sales of U.S. $ 63 billion and 189,700 employees. Sony acquired Aiwa in 2002 companies.
Sony also has a television channel in India and the channels devoted to the Indian community in Europe.
Sony standard
Sony is famous for its history of creation is often impose their own standards for recording and storage technologies, which often differ from other companies or from artificial trends in the market. The most famous of all is the video cassette format war in 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 was forced to succumb.
Sony keep trying the same tactic with subsequent technologies; eg digital recording format, MiniDisc encouraged to be a substitute for the audio cassette while his rival chose CD-R and MP3.
Sony also uses massively Memory Stick flash memory module for digital cameras and other portable equipment, which few other manufacturers use. Sony is also trying to compete with the Iomega Zip drive and Imation Superdisk with artificial HiFD them but failed big.
development
On July 20, 2004, the European Union approved the 50-50 merger between Sony Music Entertainment and BMG. The new company will be called Sony BMG and Universal will co RIAA colleagues, control 60% of the world music market.
On 13 September 2004, a Sony-led consortium completed an agreement to buy the famous film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for U.S. $ 5 billion, including $ 2 million in debt.
