Sony
| |
| Sony | |
| Type | Public |
|---|---|
| Founded | May 7, 1946 (Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo) January 1958 (Sony) |
| Headquarters | Tokyo, Japan |
| Key people | Masaru Ibuka, founder Akio Morita, founder |
| Industry | Electronics |
| Products | PlayStation video game consoles |
| Number of people | 109,700 |
| Website | http://www.sony.com/ |
Sony (ソニー) is an electronics company that was founded as Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo (東京通信工業, Tokyo Communications Industry) on May 7, 1946 in Tokyo by Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita.
The company was nicknamed "Totsuko" in Japan, but a new name was sought after Akio Morita visited the United States and discovered that most Americans had trouble pronouncing the name. They decided to use Sony, as a portmanteau of the Latin word "sonus", for sound, and "sonny", which was a loan word from English. In Japan, "sonny boys" were smart and presentable young men. The founders of Sony considered this to fit their image, and the name stuck. The first product to be marketed under the Sony brand, a transistor radio, was released in 1955, and the company officially changed its name to Sony in January 1958.
Sony enters the computer market
The MSX, a standardized home computer architecture, was announced by Microsoft on June 16, 1983. The MSX architecture was used by many Japanese electronics companies to manufacture and market computers, including Sony. MSX became the most popular computer architecture of its time in Japan. Although the MSX never caught on in North America, it was popular in some markets outside of Asia. This included Russia, where a Sony MSX2 machine was launched into space onboard the Mir, the first modular space station, which operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001.
Compact disc specifications
Sony and Philips authored most of the compact disc specifications, including Compact Disc Digital Audio (CDDA), Compact Disc Read-Only Memory (CD-ROM), and Compact Disc Recordable (CD-R).
Creation of the PlayStation
In 1991, at the Consumer Electronics Show, Sony announced the Super NES CD-ROM. It was meant to be released in two formats. The first was a CD-ROM add-on for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The second was a unit that combined the SNES and CD-ROM in one unit that Sony dubbed the PlayStation. The unit was going to be compatible with regular SNES format games as well as a Sony-developed Super Disc format. Because of the latter, Sony would have a large deal of control over the system. As a result, Nintendo tried to negotiate a better deal with Philips. This ultimately led to both deals falling through, and the add-on was never released.
Philips would go on to release its own console, the CD-i, in 1991. Sony would, likewise, release the PlayStation as a stand-alone console in 1994. The PlayStation became one of the best-selling consoles of all time, selling 102.49 million units worldwide. It outsold the systems of its closest competitors combined, as the Nintendo 64 sold 32.93 million units and the Sega Saturn sold 9.26 million units.
