 Logo since 1972 | |
.jpg) Sony's Headquarters Complex at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo | |
Native name | ソニー株式会社 |
|---|---|
Romanized name | Sonī Kabushiki Gaisha |
| Public kabushiki gaishaconglomerate | |
| Traded as | |
| Industry | Conglomerate |
| Founded | 7 May 1946; 70 years ago Tokyo, Japan[1] |
| Founders | |
| Headquarters | Minato, Tokyo, Japan |
Number of locations | 14 (2016) |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | |
| Products | |
| Services | |
| Revenue |  ¥8.1 trillion[2] (2016) |
 ¥294.2 billion[2] (2016) | |
| ¥147.8 billion[2] (2016) | |
| Total assets | ¥16.67 trillion[2] (2016) |
| Total equity | ¥2.463 trillion[2] (2016) |
Number of employees | 125,300[1] (2016) |
| Subsidiaries | List of subsidiaries |
| Website | sony.net |
Sony Corporation (ソニー株式会社 Sonī Kabushiki Gaisha?, /ˈsoʊni/) is a Japanese multinationalconglomerate corporation that is headquartered in Kōnan, Minato, Tokyo.[3] Its diversified business includes consumer and professional electronics, gaming, entertainment, and financial services.[2]The company is one of the leading manufacturers of electronic products for the consumer and professional markets.[4] Sony was ranked 116th on the 2015 list of Fortune Global 500.[5]
Sony Corporation is the electronics business unit and the parent company of the Sony Group (ソニー・グループ Sonī Gurūpu?), which is engaged in business through its four operating components – electronics (AV, IT & communication products, semiconductors, video games, network services and medical business), motion pictures (movies and TV shows), music (record labels and music publishing) and financial services (banking and insurance).[6][7][8] These make Sony one of the most comprehensive entertainment companies in the world. The group consists of Sony Corporation, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Financial Holdings and others. Sony is among the Semiconductor sales leaders by year[9] and as of 2013, the fourth-largest television manufacturer in the world, after Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and TCL.[10]
The company's current slogan is BE MOVED. Their former slogans were make.believe (2009–2014), like.no.other (2005[11]–2009) and It's a Sony (1980–2002).[12] Sony has a weak tie to the SMFG (Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group) keiretsu,[citation needed] the successor to the Mitsui keiretsu.
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 had $530[clarification needed] in capital and a total of eight employees.[13]In the following year he was joined by his colleague,[clarification needed] Akio Morita, and they founded a company called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo 東京通信工業[14][15] (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation). The company built Japan's first tape recorder, called the Type-G.[14] In 1958 the company changed its name to "Sony".
Name[edit]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.[14] 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.[16]
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 boy.[4] In the 1950s Japan "sonny boys", was a loan word into Japanese which connoted smart and presentable young men, which Sony founders Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka considered themselves to be.[4]
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.[17]
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
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.[13] In the process, he was struck by the mobility of employees between American companies, which was unheard of in Japan at that time.[13] When he returned to Japan, he encouraged experienced, middle-aged employees of other companies to reevaluate their careers and consider joining Sony.[13] The company filled many positions in this manner, and inspired other Japanese companies to do the same.[13] Moreover, Sony played a major role in the development of Japan as a powerful exporter during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.[18] It also helped to significantly improve American perceptions of "made in Japan" products.[19]Known for its production quality, Sony was able to charge above-market prices for its consumer electronics and resisted lowering prices.[19]
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.[19] Sony's profits fell sharply. "It's over for Sony," one analyst concluded. "The company's best days are behind it."[19] 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.[citation needed] Under the vision of co-founder Akio Morita[20] and his successors, the company had aggressively expanded into new businesses.[18] Part of its motivation for doing so was the pursuit of "convergence," linking film, music and digital electronics via the Internet.[18] This expansion proved unrewarding and unprofitable,[18] threatening Sony's ability to charge a premium on its products[20] as well as its brand name.[20] 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.[18] He hoped to sell off peripheral business and focus the company again on electronics.[20] Furthermore, he aimed to increase cooperation between business units,[20] which he described as "silos" operating in isolation from one another.[21] In a bid to provide a unified brand for its global operations, Sony introduced a slogan known as "make.believe" in 2009.[citation needed]
Despite some successes, the company faced continued struggles in the mid- to late-2000s.[18] In 2012, Kazuo Hirai was promoted to president and CEO, replacing Sir Howard Stringer. Shortly thereafter, Hirai outlined his company-wide initiative, named "One Sony" to revive Sony from years of financial losses and bureaucratic management structure, which proved difficult for former CEO Stringer to accomplish, partly due to differences in business culture and native languages between Stringer and some of Sony's Japanese divisions and subsidiaries. Hirai outlined three major areas of focus for Sony's electronics business, which include imaging technology, gaming and mobile technology, as well as a focus on reducing the major losses from the television business.[22]
In February 2014, Sony announced the sale of its Vaio PC division to a new corporation owned by investment fund Japan Industrial Partners and spinning its TV division into its own corporation as to make it more nimble to turn the unit around from past losses totaling $7.8 billion over a decade.[23]Later that month, they announced that they would be closing 20 stores.[24] In April, the company announced that they would be selling 9.5 million shares in Square Enix (roughly 8.2 percent of the game company's total shares) in a deal worth approximately $48 million.[25] In May 2014 the company announced it was forming two joint ventures with Shanghai Oriental Pearl Group to manufacture and market Sony's PlayStation games consoles and associated software in China
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Sony offers products in a variety of product lines around the world.[28] Sony has developed a music playing robot called Rolly, dog-shaped robots called AIBO and a humanoid robot called QRIO.
As of 1 April 2016, Sony is organized into the following business segments: Mobile Communications (MC), Game & Network Services (G&NS), Imaging Products & Solutions (IP&S), Home Entertainment & Sound (HE&S), Semiconductors, Components, Pictures, Music, Financial Services and All Other.[29] The network and medical businesses are included in the G&NS and IP&S, respectively.[30]
Electronics[edit]Sony Corporation[edit]
Sony Corporation is the electronics business unit and the parent company of the Sony Group. It primarily conducts strategic business planning of the group, research and development (R&D), planning, designing and marketing for electronics products. Its subsidiaries such as Sony Global Manufacturing & Operations Corporation (SGMO; ４ plants in Japan), Sony Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (7 plants in Japan), Sony Storage Media and Devices Corporation, Sony Energy Devices Corporation and its subsidiaries outside Japan (Brazil, China, UK (Wales), India, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Ireland and United States) are responsible for manufacturing as well as product engineering (SGMO [clarification needed] is also responsible for customer service operations). In 2012, Sony rolled most of its consumer content services (including video, music and gaming) into the Sony Entertainment Network.
Audio[edit]Sony produced the world's first portable music player, the Walkman in 1979. This line fostered a fundamental change in music listening habits by allowing people to carry music with them and listen to music through lightweight headphones. Walkman originally referred to portable audio cassette players. The company now uses the Walkman brand to market its portable audio and video players as well as a line of former Sony Ericsson mobile phones.
Sony utilized a related brand, Discman, to refer to its CD players. It dropped this name in the late 1990s.
Computing[edit]Sony produced computers (MSX home computers and NEWS workstations) during the 1980s, exclusively for sale in the Japanese market. The company withdrew from the computer business around 1990. Sony entered again into the global computer market under the new VAIO brand, began in 1996. Short for "Video Audio Integrated Operation", the line was the first computer brand to highlight visual-audio features.[21]
Sony faced considerable controversy when some of its laptop batteries exploded and caught fire in 2006, resulting in the largest computer-related recall to that point in history.[31][32][33]
In a bid to join the tablet computer market, the company launched its Sony Tablet line of Android tablets in 2011. Since 2012, Sony's Android products have been marketed under the Xperia brand used for its smartphones.[34]
On 4 February 2014, Sony announced that it will sell its VAIO PC business due to poor sales[35] and Japanese company Japan Industrial Partners (JIP) will purchase the VAIO brand, with the deal finalized by the end of March 2014.[36] Sony maintains a minority stake in the new, independent company.
Photography & videography[edit]
Sony offers a wide range of digital cameras. Point-and-shoot models adopt the Cyber-shot name, while digital single-lens reflex models are branded using Alpha.
The first Cyber-shot was introduced in 1996. At the time, digital cameras were a relative novelty. Sony's market share of the digital camera market fell from a high of 20% to 9% by 2005.[21]
Sony entered the market for digital single-lens reflex cameras in 2006 when it acquired the camera business of Konica Minolta. Sony rebranded the company's line of cameras as its Alpha line. Sony is the world's third largest manufacturer of the cameras, behind Canon and Nikon respectively.
There are also a variety of Camcorders which are manufactured by Sony.