Mrk Fox

Sony

Sony was founded in 1946 by Masaru Ibuka. Ibuka was joined by his colleague Akio Morita a year later and the pair formed Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation) the company was based in Tokyo. Ibuka wanted a stronger more marketable name for the company but couldn’t use the business initials due to a local railway company being known as TTK already. They began to use the name Totsuko in Japan but during a trip to the United States of America Morita realised the American people had trouble pronouncing the name. This is when the name Sony was chosen. In 1958 Sony was picked as the name for company based on a mix of two words “sonus” a Latin word which is the root of sonic and sound, and sonny a common slang word in the 1950’s which was used for smart, young presentable boys which is what Ibuka and Morita considered themselves to be.

Sony makes many technologic products such as TV’s, Game consoles, Camera’s, DVD and Blu-Ray players, Laptops, smart watches and smart phones being some of many examples. Sony has a foot in almost every area in relation to technology and views themselves as “innovators” (Sony, 2017) who have an “unlimited passion” for technology (Sony, 2017). Ibuka once said himself that he wanted Sony to be a “clever company who as an innovator would make new technology products in ingenious ways” (Grayson, 2012). Sony began manufacturing their first product and 1955 Sony’s first product appeared the TR-55 transistor radio. Sony also produced the Walkman cassette player in the late 1970’s a product that I myself had when I was a kid only a decade ago which shows how successful it was. The version of a Walkman I had however was a modernized version which used CD’s rather that cassette. The first CD based Walkman; the D-50 appeared in 1984 and changed the way we listened to music for the next 20, 25 years. So perhaps Sony’s modern day view on themselves as being innovators is backed up.