Tokyo Communications Industry Era
Sony Center at Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, Germany
In 1945, Japan's capital, Tokyo, was left in ruins after World War II. Fukuda Inoue established the Tokyo Communications Research Institute in a department store warehouse in the Nihonbashi area of Tokyo. Akio Morita was invited by Inoue to join **** with the management of the company and received 190,000 yen in capital from Morita Sake, and formally established the "Tokyo Communications Industry Co.
In his "Letter of Intent for the Establishment of the Company" (original Japanese: "Letter of Intent for the Establishment"), Mr. Inoue expressed his hope that the company would become a "paradise for engineers" and that it would be "an ideal factory where the skills of diligent and conscientious technicians are fully utilized, and where the company is able to establish a free and open-minded factory where people can relax and enjoy themselves. "A paradise for engineers".
In the early years of the company's existence, it was not possible to achieve stable growth until a decade later, in 1956, when the company developed the world's first transistor radio, the "TR-55," which had not been favored at the time, and its operations finally began to improve.
Trinitron technology
In the 1950s, Sony's black-and-white televisions were a big seller, but their technological competitiveness was not at all advantageous, and the quality of the color televisions they later manufactured was not good enough in terms of mass-production yields, which led to huge losses and even brought the company to the brink of closure. 1967 saw the release of the Trinitron technology, which was developed by Fukudai Inui, and this technology made it possible to develop the world's first transistor radio "TR-55. In 1967, Sony announced the development of Trinitron technology, which was joined by Fukuda Inoue himself. The technology made Sony TVs a global hit, and Akio Morita's huge development debt from the Development Bank of Japan was paid off within three years.
Rapid growth
Betamax falls
Sony's HDV product: Sony HVR-S270U
In 1970, Sony, along with JVC and Matsushita***, published the U-Matic tape recording system, which formally kicked off the competition for future videotape specifications. On April 16, 1975, Sony released the world's first Betamax-specification SL-300 for the consumer market, and in one fell swoop, Sony became a global consumer electronics imaging powerhouse.
And Japan's JVC introduced the VHS specification in September 1976, and Konosuke Matsushita decided to join the VHS camp. In the Betamax-VHS video record competition, VHS rapidly expanded the market at three times the rate of Betamax as VHS improved on Betamax's biggest weakness (recording time of only one hour) and Betamax's reluctance to open up the specification for licensing in the face of Sony's unwillingness to do so.
Sony Camcorders
Sony insisted on Betamax against the VHS consortium, whose specifications were made public by the world, and the 14-year battle for specification dominance finally ended in 1988 when Sony resolutely joined the VHS camp and Betamax withdrew from the market altogether. The Beta format was far superior to the VHS format from a technical point of view, but Panasonic gained the support of many manufacturers through flexible licensing and thus dominated the civilian market, while the Betamax format entered the professional arena by virtue of its technological superiority and became the dominant standard in the field of professional broadcast-quality video, on which many of today's broadcast-quality video standards are based.
The Walkman
In March 1979, at the request of Fukudai Inoue, the audio department modified the Pressman, a small recorder for journalists, into a smaller one. After receiving many favorable comments on its sound quality, Sony, under the leadership of Akio Morita, launched the Pressman in July 1979. In July 1979, Sony launched the Walkman (Walkman), Akio Morita positioned the Walkman in the youth market, and emphasized youthful vitality and fashion, and created a headphone culture, and in February 1980, it began to make sales around the world, and in November 1980, it began to use the "Walkman" globally. In November 1980, the global standardization of the use of "Walkman", which is not a standard Japanese English for the brand, until 1998, "Walkman" has sold more than 250 million units worldwide. Akio Morita was knighted in the UK in October 1992, with a headline in the British press reading: "Rise and shine, Sir Sony Walkman".
Development
Acquisition of Columbia Pictures
After Sony's disastrous defeat in the competition between Betamax and VHS Video Records, Akio Morita believed that it was necessary to combine the highest-grade hardware with the most up-to-date content in order to master the market.
On Sept. 25, 1989, under Akio Morita's leadership, Japan's Sony acquired CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System, Columbia Broadcasting System), which was the world's largest broadcasting company, in the United States. Columbia Broadcasting System), making it a subsidiary of SPE (Sony Picture Entertainment).
In the context of the time and space, Japan's economy grew dramatically, laying the world's second-largest economy of
Sony Qrio Robotics
status, while the U.S. economy is downhill like atrophy; Japan due to the Second World War lost to the U.S., many Japanese companies for the sake of national pride, frantically merged with U.S. companies, and the numerous American companies were powerless to fight back.
Which to Mitsubishi (Mitsubishi) bought New York's landmark Rockefeller Center (Rockefeller Center) as well as Sony to 6 billion U.S. dollars to buy Columbia TriStar Pictures, creating the largest Japanese overseas mergers and acquisitions at the time, was seen by Americans as a Japanese invasion of the United States.
But this acquisition, the highest amount of money in Japanese history, also made Sony once in the history of Japan's highest loss of business. the late 1980s, Japan began to erupt in the bubble economic crisis, and Sony's film business group because of poor box office, and from then on the loss of money for a few years, become the main obstacle to the profitability of the Sony at that time. It wasn't until 1997 that Howard Stringer led reforms that gradually led to profits and the November 2004 acquisition of the historic MGM studios.
PlayStation
Sony PSP
The success of the red-and-white Nintendo console produced by Nintendo prompted Sony to announce a partnership with Nintendo in 1988 to **** co-develop a CD-ROM console for the Super Nintendo.
In May 1992, after Nintendo's betrayal of the cooperation broke down, Ryoki Kudo to the highest management decision-maker at the time, Norio Oga to fight for the development of a new generation of game console program, Norio Oga in the many voices of opposition, a strong endorsement of Ryoki Kudo's game console development program, 1993, Sony's subsidiary of the "Sony Music Japan" established Sony Computer Entertainment. "In 1993, Sony Music Japan, a subsidiary of Sony, established Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) and planned to develop a new generation of CD-ROM game consoles under the codename "PS-X" to counter the Nintendo-dominated game market.
SCE launched the PlayStation (PS) on December 3, 1994, the PlayStation 2 (PS2) on March 4, 2000, the PlayStation Portable (PSP) on December 12, 2004, and the PlayStation 3 (PS3) on November 11, 2006, and the PlayStation 3 (PS3) on November 11, 2006, respectively. PlayStation 3 (PS3) on November 11, 2006, PlayStation Vita (PSVITA) on December 17, 2011. and Playstation 4 (PS4) on November 15, 2013. Until March 31, 2012, the PlayStation series of TV game consoles sold more than 423 million units, of which PS for 142.5 million units, PS2 for 155.8 million units, PSP for 76.3 million units, PS3 for 64.85 million units, PlayStation has become the world's most successful product after the Walkman.
Digital dream child
In Oga Norio's decision, jumping over fourteen senior directors and senior veterans, Sony announced on March 22, 1995, by the unknown Izumi Nobuyuki as president, provoking the media reporter a "Izumi who?" questions. The question of April 1, 1995 took office, but also opened 10 years of Izumi Noboru digital dream era. Since his appointment in 1995, he has introduced the American model of a board of directors into the company's internal reforms, drastically reducing the number of members of the former internal board of directors and increasing the number of outside directors. In terms of the company's positioning and management philosophy, he introduced the concepts of "Digital, Dreams, Kids," "Do you dream in Sony," "Ubiquitous Value Network," "Ubiquitous Value Network" and "Ubiquitous Value Network," as well as the concepts of "Digital, Dreams, Kids. ...and other new visions for Sony, Nobuyuki Izumi believes that Sony sells personal experiences, and that our raison d'être is to create people's desires and provide a dream.
Sony Cyber-shot DSC HX200V
He concludes that Sony sells personal experiences, movies, VAIO, PlayStation, Walkman, etc... They are not necessary to sustain human life; our raison d'être is to create people's desires, to enter into their lives, to provide a dream, and in order to achieve this we have to maintain a bare heart full of curiosity and joy, to give people a childlike, carefree and happy life."
"If we don't develop a brand new business model, Sony will be reduced to a supplier of network operator parts. The new Sony products should then be a blend of entertainment, electronics and emotion."
Bringing in digitization and networking with the four major areas of electronics, gaming, entertainment, and finance, Sony launched CyberShot digital cameras, VAIO notebooks, Clie PDAs (personal digital assistants)...and other digitized products after 1996, which were unprecedentedly successful in the marketplace. In the movie business group, which originally had very poor earnings, Howard Stringer, a media personality, was recruited, and under his reforms, operations gradually improved, and popular movies such as Spider-Man and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon were released, making the Entertainment Business Group an important source of profitability for Sony. In its 2000 financial report released in April 2001, Sony relied on the popularity of the PlayStation 2 to make its highest profit since its founding, $2.5 billion.
Facing a crisis
The world's first Walkman: the Sony TPS-L2
The PlayStation beat rival Nintendo and drove away SEGA, digital cameras took the lead over traditional camera brands, video-receiver chips dominated the market, and the VAIO series of personal computers were a hit. However, since the global economic recession in 2001, the Internet bubble; published in 1994, PlayStation development has been 10 years after the release of the original product; itself in the field of electronics because WalkMan does not support the MP3 format caused by Apple Computer's iPod digital Walkman in the world's popularity, replacing WalkMan's original position.
WEGA, which boasts Trinitron technology, developed high-definition video technology on its own and misjudged the development of LCD TVs, allowing Sharp and Samsung, which own LCD technology, to take the lead in TV imaging... A series of decision-making errors and the constant compression of electronic product prices led to Sony's success in the 2000s. A series of poor decision-making and price compression in electronics made Sony's unprecedented success in 2000 a serious setback in 2002.
April 2003, Sony announced its 2002 fiscal year statement, the company's huge losses disclosed, Sony crisis began to surface, triggering the Sony Shock (Sony Shock), Sony stock fell 25% for 2 consecutive days, and induced the Japanese stock market of high-tech stocks have to dive, led the Nikkei index fell sharply, shaking the Japanese stock market, high-tech companies' stocks have been sold. Stocks of high-tech companies were sold off. Izumi nobuyuki suffered criticism of dreaming too long, not business voice also appeared, from the past was selected as the most successful CEO fell into the worst CEO. 2003 December Izumi nobuyuki illustrated the network is like a meteorite fall, the dinosaurs so tragic extinction, Sony is such a crisis exists. In the same month, he also released the "Transformation 60" reform plan, which expects the electronics division to achieve a 10% surplus within three years.
Mid-term and the future
Sony's first Cyber-shot camera: the DSC-F1
At the 2006 International CES, Sony unveiled its strategy for the future of its entertainment business, focusing on four pillars of business: high-definition, digital cinema, gaming, and e-entertainment, in order to strengthen its position as a full-service entertainment company. services company.
Effective October 1, 2006, the Sony Group will realign the head of the Electronics Business to strengthen its medium- and long-term growth strategy, further support its core businesses, and focus on strengthening the areas of product development and product quality. R&D and all new business functions will be centralized at Sony's headquarters under the direct leadership of Ryoji Nakaboshi.
In 2008 Sony was ranked No. 12 on the list of China's No. 1 Brands for Buyer Satisfaction compiled by the World Brand Value Lab.
When Kazuo Hirai took office in 2012, he made the mobile devices business, the digital imaging business, and the gaming business the core businesses of Sony's electronics business, while striving to turn around the TV business and aggressively developing new businesses. He also put forward the one sony strategy in a bid to gather the strength of the entire group.
On April 16, 2013 Sony announced that it had set up an endoscopy research and development company with medical device maker Olympus***, and would formally join the medical device industry[5].