The origins of SONY.
Just as many inventions and sony companies have their origins in the Second World War, in that period two of the founders met; Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka.
At the end of the war and after losing contact between the two, Ibuka returned to Tokyo and created a company called Totsuken, dedicated to repairing radios and manufacturing shortwave converters.
Little by little, Ibuka’s firm began to become known and to have more demand, so Morita saw in a newspaper what Ibuka was doing, contacted him and they partnered to create the totsuko firm, with which they created the first analog magnetic recorder in their country and in the year of 1955, a radio receiver was released under the name of Sony, this word has its origin in two concepts, the Latin word Sonus and the fact that in Japan the expression «Sonny boy» was used to refer to a person with an avant-garde spirit. This concept would be taken to more a few years later, since in 1958 the firm ended up being called Sony Corporation, a name that has remained to this day.
TVs, Walkman and discs, the way to revolutionize the market by Sony.
Almost reaching the 70s, Sony launched its Trinitron technology, which aimed for televisions to provide 25 percent brighter images when compared to those of other televisions of those years and that would set the tone for the firm to become one of the most popular for manufacturing televisions.
Televisions were not the only products sold by Sony, since it also launched a VTR called U-Matic and the first color videocassette recorder, which also included a television tuner, so you could watch one channel and at the same time record another; products of this type continued throughout the decade.
Sony also launched the Betamax format in 1975, although it was successful at first, gradually losing its dominance to VHS, because Sony refused to share the format with other companies.
Later, Sony created the Walkman, a personal radio player that, although it was not the first of its kind, was a watershed within the brand, since from its departure it was changing little by little and updated based on the technologies of the time, since later the cassette functionality was added, CD and even MP3, already in the decade of the two thousand, which came to have even touch screens and different storage capacities, becoming one of the products that had a longer life.
This particular invention had some controversy as Andreas Pavel, a German-Brazilian inventor created the first stereo audio player in 1972 and even Sony in 1986 agreed to pay royalties, but without recognizing its intellectual property. However, the Sony version had changes that were attributed to co-founder Masaru Ibuka, given the problem that he wanted to exercise listening to music, but without disturbing the people around him.
The conflict ended until 2006, when in a trial, Sony agreed to pay Pavel all the rights that corresponded to him in addition to the royalties, although the amount they paid was not known.
Returning to the timeline, by the beginning of the 80s, Sony together with Philips agreed on the development of the Compact Disc (CD), an invention that was used too much from the 80s to 2 thousand and currently has a more moderate use, but it is still valid.
Later, in the 90s, Sony focused on the globalization of its brand, they began to have a presence more and more on the Western side than on the East, to such an extent that, at one point, the executive board stopped meeting in Japan and did so in the United States, particularly in New York.
In addition to all the products already marketed, the firm also developed, with great success, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Music Group and Sony Entertainment Television -with channels such as AXN, ¡E!, Animax (in Europe), among others-.
Among the products they launched during that time are listed camcorders, computers under the VAIO line, Cyber-Shot digital cameras, the Blue Ray format and a video game console that is worth mentioning separately: the PlayStation.
PlayStation, Sony’s successful video game division.
Interestingly, from a failed alliance between Nintendo and Sony came one of the most famous consoles for some years: the Playstation. It all began with a contract in which both firms committed to develop a special section to incorporate CD games in the Super Nintendo, although the latter ended up withdrawing and with it, they left their commitment to Sony in suspense.
After learning of the refusal, Ken Kuturagi, one of Sony’s engineers, had the idea of creating a console project. At first, Sony did not believe so much in the project, but even so, the Japanese firm managed to implement alliances with the main creators of video games, which made the most famous game sagas.
Precisely the technology that Nintendo rejected (CD-ROM) was the main one in this console. In the same way, the Memory Card, the DualDigital control and later the DualAnalog (which differed in having levers) and the vibration in the controller were transcendental to succeed.
However, Sony did not stop there and created an improved version, the PS2, such was its demand, that in its beginnings there was a shortage of consoles. This console stood out for having backward compatibility with PS1 games, as well as the ability to play DVD movies and music on CD, this was transcendental for it to succeed.
Later, the line continued with the PS3 and this was Sony’s first setback with respect to consoles, although the PS1 and PS2 the PS3 had countless criticisms when the price of the console increased and released games considered of low quality despite the fact that a Blu-ray player was included.
For its part, the PS4 was launched on November 29, 2013 and although it slightly improved opinions about the brand, some specialists consider that it passed «without pain or glory» but providing a recovery in the image of Sony.
After this came the PS5, since its launch in 2020 has meant a large percentage of sales for Sony, just one year, has managed to sell more than 13 million units, according to data from the Japanese company itself, this despite the shortage of consoles that there was during its launch.
The PlayStation 5 has a good acceptance, it should be remembered that in the world there is a shortage of chips, which will impact Sony according to its own estimates. However, good news for them in this branch is that PlayStation Plus subscribers go up every month.
So far, this console continues to write its history and compete with the Xbox S and X series, as well as Nintendo’s Switch.
The fall of Sony Mobile.
Countless have been the successes of Sony, however it has also had strong falls, one of them is the fall of Sony Mobile led by the Xperia line, the year 2020 was considered one of the years in which fewer devices sold the Japanese giant due to much of the growth of competition in the Smartphone industry, such was the impact on its sales that Sony withdrew the commercialization of its mobile devices in Latin America, Canada, Australia, Mexico, the Middle East and Africa, its products were considered of the best quality but could not compete in prices for the market offer, leaving only open some markets such as Europe, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Sony’s Mobile division disappeared in 2019, merging with the creation of digital cameras, screens and audio.
The future of Sony.
Reviewing the history of Sony we can realize that if something they know how to do in the company is to diversify and not stay only in the line of a product. This, landed in the year 2022 has left very good dividends to Sony, if one branch does not do so well, another does excellent and recovers.
To give us an idea, Sony Group reported operating profit for the last quarter of 2021 of 4 billion dollars in February, which exceeded even analysts’ estimates.
Although in the market Sony has an extensive line of screens, speakers, headphones, video games and even drones, what gave it the support on this occasion was the fact that it has the rights to Spiderman, since the film No Way Home left a high amount of profits, in addition to that also a high percentage of the profits were for camera sensors, which are sold for Apple to use on its iPhones.
What is a fact is that Sony will continue to give something to talk about and generate content for a very good time, although in 2021 it no longer appeared among the 100 most valuable brands in the world, experts in the field predict a good future.
