Sony
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Sony (In katakana: ソニー) is a consumer electronics corporation based in Tokyo, Japan. It was founded on May 7, 1946 as the Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering with about 20 employees. Their first consumer product, in the late 1940s, was a rice boiler. As it grew into a major international corporation, Sony acquired other companies with longer histories, including Columbia Records (the oldest continuously produced brand name in recorded sound, dating back to 1888).
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 TKK.
Sony was chosen as a mix of the latin word sonus, which is the root of sonic and sound, and the english word sonny. At the time of the change, it was extremely odd for a Japanese company to use roman letters to spell its name, much less the phonetic script used in the Japanese writing, instead of Chinese characters.
The move was not without opposition; TTK's principle 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 Chairman Bandai, and President Masaru Ibuka gave their approval.
In 1988, Sony acquired CBS (Columbia) Records Group from CBS. It was renamed "Sony Music Entertainment".
In 2000, Sony had sales of US $63 billion and 189,700 employees. Sony acquired Aiwa corporation in 2002.
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The following is a partial list of products marketed by Sony:
Film production & theaters
Notable products
See also
External links