Birth of a Global Brand

Behind the phenomenal success of Sony are two men. Masaru Ibuka was an engineer and Akio Morita a physicist when they decided to create a company repairing and building electrical equipment. On May 7, 1946, Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K. (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation), also known as Totsuko, was established in Tokyo. The new company had no machinery and little scientific equipment. Possessing only their own intelligence and engineering expertise, Ibuka and Morita set about to create new markets.

Origin of the word 'Sony'

In 1955, the company decided to use the SONY logo on Totsuko products and three years later changed its name to Sony Corporation.

Two concepts were combined to create the name 'Sony'. One was the Latin word 'sonus' which is the root of words such as 'sound' and 'sonic'. The other was 'sonny boy,' a popular expression used in Japan at the time to describe a young person with a free and pioneering spirit. The new name perfectly captured the mood of the company as a group of young people with the energy and passion for unlimited creation.

Milestones

Right from those early days, the company developed a reputation for being innovative. In 1950, Totsuko launched the 'Soni-Tape', Japan's first magnetite-coated, paper-based recording tape. This was soon followed by Japan's first magnetic tape recorder, the G-Type. In 1954, the company won a licence to make transistors, a new technology that had been invented in America but had not yet been applied to radios which were still bulky valve-driven appliances. In May of that year, Totsuko launched Japan's first transistor and then followed this with the world’s first all-transistor radio in 1955. Since then, few companies have matched Sony's track record for invention and innovation. Ground-breaking developments include the first Trinitron Colour Television in 1968, the colour video cassette player in 1971, the Betamax VCR in 1975, the Walkman in 1979, the world's first CD player in 1982, the 8mm camcorder based on a universal standard in 1985, the first consumer-use digital video camcorder in 1995, the next generation high capacity optical disc "Blu-ray Disc" recorder in 2003 and the world's first consumer use digital HD video camera recorder conforming to HDV standards in 2004, just to mention a few historic Sony milestones.

Since the company was established over 60 years ago, it has grown from 20 employees to almost 160,000 people around the world.

Sony has always been an international company. Akio Morita recognised from the beginning that his company needed to regard the whole world as its marketplace and was careful not to restrict activities to Japan alone. He also insisted that the Sony name be prominent on all company products and materials to maximise the power of the brand.



To read more about Sony's history, please refer to the History chapter on www.sony.net