Sony Brand Story; From the production of rice cookers to becoming one of the most famous companies in the world

The Ibuka company repaired broken radios and also made it possible to receive waves using a series of converters. It didn’t take long for this model of radio to gain many fans among people.

Their business was in the center of attention and for this reason one of the Japanese newspapers published an article about them. This article not only got them more customers but also brought Ibuka’s old friend, Akio Morita, closer to him.

Ibuka and Morita, the founders of Sony Corporation, first met on a research committee studying new types of war weapons.

After some time passed, despite the big age difference, a deep friendship between Ibuka and Morita was formed. After the end of the war, Morita returned to his hometown and the communication between them was cut off. Until one day he read his friend’s name in a newspaper article and called Ibuka. Ibuka also asked him to get to Tokyo as soon as possible to start working with him again.

In 1950, the first Japanese tape recorder was made from its American model. This device was also not well received until Sony released a translated version of 999 Ways to Use the tape recorder.

After people became familiar with the product’s uses, the purchase request increased and the Sony tape recorder sold well. The demand for this product increased so much that the company had to expand its facilities to produce orders.

Japan’s first transistor radio was introduced in 1955 by Sony.

In 1960, Sony released the world’s first portable transistor TV. Sony used radio technology to produce this device.

The televisions of that time were big and in every house, a specific room was reserved for them. But these products brought a new definition of personal televisions to the market.

In 1971, Sony unveiled another product. This player was able to show videotapes in color inside the TV.

Masaru Ibuka retired in 1976 and was succeeded by Akio Morita as CEO.

In 1979, Sony launched the first generation of Walkmans. These devices were portable and customers could listen to their favorite cassettes anywhere.

Many employees of the company believed that this device could not become popular among people without the ability to record sound. But contrary to their belief, this device introduced a new and successful lifestyle among people and achieved remarkable success.

The world’s first CD player was launched in 1982 by Sony.

One of Sony’s senior managers, Norio Oga, was elected as the company’s CEO in 1989. Sony bought Columbia Pictures in the same year. This action was considered the biggest purchase of a Japanese company at that time.

PlayStation is another important product of Sony. This product was sold in the Japanese market in 1994 and entered America and Europe in 1995.

PlayStation became so popular among people that its sales reached 10 million units by the end of 1996, and in 1998, about 50 million of this console had been sold. The production of new models of this product continues and today PlayStation 5 is considered the newest Sony console.

The first digital camera was launched by Sony in 1995. This device was very well built and recorded high-quality videos.

Sony Mobile Company started working in 2001 in cooperation with Ericsson. The company’s products were first marketed under the name of Sony Ericsson until Sony bought Ericsson’s shares in 2012. Since then, the phones of this company have entered the market under the name of Sony.

In 2012, Sony was able to win the title of the fourth mobile phone manufacturer. Xperia series mobile phones are the current flagships of this company. The Xperia brand doesn’t sell much at the moment, but Sony continues to produce products.

The first generation of Vaio laptops was launched in 1997. These laptops had a slim body and introduced a new concept of personal computers to the world.

Masaru Ibuka was born on April 11, 1908 in Nikko, Japan. He graduated from the university in 1933 and worked in a film production company. Ibuka joined the Navy during World War II and was a member of the investigative committee; But after some time in 1945, he left the war to start his own radio repair workshop in Tokyo.

At that time, people followed the news of the world through the radio. As a result, starting a radio-related business was a good idea for a company. Ibuka and Akio founded Sony in 1946. Ibuka used transistors to make his company’s products. Therefore, Sony was introduced to the world as one of the first companies to use this technology for non-combat purposes.

Akio Morita was born on January 26, 1921 in Japan. He was the eldest of his four siblings. As a result, his father trained him to manage the family business.

Akio was very interested in mathematics and physics and graduated from university with a degree in physics. During World War II, he became a member of the Japanese Army’s Research Committee, and while serving, met his future business partner, Masaru Ibuka.

Morita was a huge fan of all Sony products and worked hard to promote them. For example, the size of their first production radios was slightly larger than the standard shirt pocket size. Because they wanted to market their products as pocket radios, Morita made shirts for their employees with larger pockets to show customers that these radios were pocket radios.

Sony established its first branch in America in 1960. Sony was the first Japanese company to enter the US stock market. In 1994, Morita suffered a stroke while playing tennis and resigned from the chairmanship of Sony. He finally died of pneumonia in 1999 at the age of 78.

Since its establishment in 1964, Sony has produced successful and innovative products. Many of these products were entering the market for the first time, and as a result, they introduced a new concept of technology to the world; But no success story is without failures.

Sony robots were launched in 1999. These robots were in the form of cute dogs and had the power to learn. These robots could show emotions such as happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, fear and disinterest.

Sony robots were sold at a price of $2,500 and were very popular among their owners. But its high price prevented it from increasing its popularity and eventually, Sony stopped production.

In 1979, Sony introduced a new concept of portability to the market by presenting its Walkman. The company had been Apple’s fierce competitor in digital music for two years, but its first product did not perform well.

The biggest mistake of the company was the dependence of files on the ATRACT format. Files with this format could only be used in Sony minidiscs. The ability to share files was the first word in digital music in 2000, and all files were released in MP3 format. As a result, this issue became a big challenge for Sony.

In 2001, many companies were offering Internet home appliances, including dedicated terminals for accessing the Internet and web browsers. Sony e-Villa was also a product that was launched with the same purpose.

The e-villa had a 15-inch monitor and a 56 kbps dial-up modem. e-Villa was designed to have access to email services and websites. At that time, there was a lot of competition between these devices and people preferred to use devices with Windows XP. As a result, Sony stopped the production of these products after three months.

10 years before people became interested in watching videos on tablets, Sony launched a device called Airboard. The tablets of this family were 10 inches and had the possibility to connect to Wi-Fi and broadcast TV channels.

Using the picture-in-picture feature, users could search the Internet and watch TV. This device never caught on because people thought it was just a portable and expensive TV. Therefore, its production was stopped before entering the American market.

In 2003, Sony combined its two products, the PlayStation 2 and the video recorder, and marketed it as a single product. Using this product, customers could record the TV show on the storage memory or DVD at the same time as the game experience.

But the PSX, which was released only in Japan, was much larger and heavier than the PlayStation. Although this product did not have a high price, it could never attract many customers.

Sony is one of the largest Japanese companies by revenue. The company reached the peak of profitability in the 1990s and 2000s due to the launch of its PlayStations, but faced financial problems in the late 2000s.

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The global financial crisis, increased competition with PlayStation, and the earthquake in Japan in 2011 went hand in hand with Sony experiencing major failures for three years.

Due to the negative effects caused by natural disasters and exchange rates, the Times magazine called Sony a lack of flexibility and inability to measure the economy, but Sony was able to overcome all the crises in all these years by using innovation and became one of the top companies in the world. become in the television industry.

Sony’s current slogan is Be Moved, and the company aims to emotionally excite its customers with every product it offers.

Sony was able to pocket an operating profit of 1.21 trillion yen (about 8.9 billion dollars) in fiscal year 2022, which is a new record. Sony’s revenue in the final quarter of last year grew by 35 percent to about 3.06 trillion yen ($22.5 billion).