102 Facts About Sony

Sony has a weak tie to the Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group corporate group, the successor to the Mitsui keiretsu.

Sony is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange with an additional listing in the form of American depositary receipts listed in the New York Stock Exchange (traded since 1970, making it the oldest Japanese company to be listed in an American exchange), and was ranked 88th on the 2021 Fortune Global 500 list.

Sony started with a capital of ¥190, 000 and a total of eight employees.

Sony occasionally used the acronym "Totsuko" in Japan, but during his visit to the United States, Morita discovered that Americans had trouble pronouncing that name.

Name "Sony" was chosen for the brand as a mix of two words: one was the Latin word "sonus", which is the root of sonic and sound, and the other was "sonny", a common slang term used in 1950s America to call a young boy.

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Sony filled many positions in this manner, and inspired other Japanese companies to do the same.

Sony began a life insurance company in 1979, one of its many peripheral businesses.

Sony encouraged the development of the compact disc in the 1970s and 1980s, and of the PlayStation in the early 1990s.

Sony hoped to sell off peripheral business and focus the company again on electronics.

In February 2014, Sony announced the sale of its Vaio PC division to a new corporation owned by investment fund Japan Industrial Partners and spinning its TV division into its own corporation as to make it more nimble to turn the unit around from past losses totaling $7.

In 2017, Sony sold its lithium-ion battery business to Murata Manufacturing.

Sony has historically been notable for creating its own in-house standards for new recording and storage technologies, instead of adopting those of other manufacturers and standards bodies, while its success in the early years owes to a smooth capitalization on the Compact Cassette standard introduced by Philips, with which Sony went on to enjoy a decades-long technological relationship in various areas.

Sony has introduced several of the most popular recording formats, including the 3.

Sony introduced U-matic, the world's first videocassette format, in 1971, but the standard was unpopular for domestic use due to the high price.

Sony was involved in the videotape format war of the early 1980s, when they were marketing the Betamax system for video cassette recorders against the VHS format developed by JVC.

In 1985, Sony launched their Handycam products and the Video8 format.

Sony held a patent for its proprietary Trinitron until 1996.

Sony introduced the Triluminos Display, the company's proprietary color reproduction enhancing technology, in 2004, featured in the world's first LED-backlit LCD televisions.

In 2013, Sony released a new line of televisions with an improved version of the technology, which incorporated quantum dots in the backlight system.

Sony used the Compact Cassette format in many of its tape recorders and players, including the Walkman, the world's first portable music player.

Sony introduced the MiniDisc format in 1992 as an alternative to Philips DCC or Digital Compact Cassette and as a successor to the Compact Cassette.

Since the introduction of MiniDisc, Sony has attempted to promote its own audio compression technologies under the ATRAC brand, against the more widely used MP3.

SDDS was solely developed for use in the theatre circuit; Sony never intended to develop a home theatre version of SDDS.

Sony contributed it as part of the Android Open Source Project starting from Android 8.

Sony demonstrated an optical digital audio disc in 1977 and soon joined hands with Philips, another major contender for the storage technology, to establish a worldwide standard.

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In 1984, Sony launched the Discman series, an expansion of the Walkman brand to portable CD players.

Sony began to improve performance and capacity of the novel format.

Philips and Sony abandoned their MMCD format and agreed upon Toshiba's SD format with only one modification.

Sony was one of the leading developers of the Blu-ray optical disc format, the newest standard for disc-based content delivery.

Sony held more than a 70 percent share of the market when it decided to pull the plug on the format in 2010.

In 1998, Sony launched the Memory Stick format, the flash memory cards for use in Sony lines of digital cameras and portable music players.

Sony has made updates to the Memory Stick format with Memory Stick Duo and Memory Stick Micro.

Sony has released USB flash drive products, branded under the Micro Vault line.

Sony introduced FeliCa, a contactless IC card technology primarily used in contactless payment, as a result of the company's joint development and commercialization of Near-Field Communication with Philips.

In 2019, Sony launched the ELTRES, the company's proprietary low-power wide-area wireless communication standard.

Best known for its electronic products, Sony offers a wide variety of product lines in many areas.

Sony Corporation is the electronics business unit of the Sony Group.

In 1979, Sony released the world's first portable music player, the Walkman, bundled with the MDL-3L2 headphones.

Sony is a major audio products manufacturer and one of the active noise control technology leaders.

Sony stopped production of Trinitron for most markets, but continued producing sets for markets such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and China.

Sony discontinued its series of Trinitron computer monitors in 2005.

Sony discontinued the last Trinitron-based television set in the US in early 2007.

Sony used the LCD WEGA name for its LCD TVs until summer 2005.

BRAVIA is an in-house brand owned by Sony which produces high-definition LCD televisions, projection TVs and front projectors, home cinemas and the BRAVIA home theatre range.

In 2006, Sony lost its decades-long No 1 market share in the global television market.

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From 2011, Sony started restructuring of its loss-making television business, mainly by downsizing business units and outsourcing the manufacturing of display panels to the companies like Sharp Corporation, LG Display, and Samsung Electronics.

Sony's small-sized LCD business subsidiary and medium-to-large-sized OLED display business unit were spun off and became part of Japan Display and JOLED, respectively.

Also, Sony has sold a range of tapes, discs, recorders and players for videocassette, DVD, and Blu-ray formats for decades.

Sony demonstrated a prototype of the Sony Mavica in 1981 and released it for the consumer market in 1988.

Sony entered the market for digital single-lens reflex cameras in 2006 when it acquired the camera business of Konica Minolta.

Sony rebranded the company's line of cameras as its Alpha line.

Sony is the world's third largest manufacturer of the cameras, behind Canon and Nikon respectively.

In 2010, Sony introduced their first mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras, which were the NEX-3 and the NEX-5.

Sony entered again into the global computer market under the new VAIO brand, began in 1996.

Sony faced considerable controversy when some of its laptop batteries exploded and caught fire in 2006, resulting in the largest computer-related recall to that point in history.

On 4 February 2014, Sony announced that it would sell its VAIO PC business due to poor sales and Japanese company Japan Industrial Partners will purchase the VAIO brand, with the deal finalized by the end of March 2014.

Sony has targeted medical, healthcare and biotechnology business as a growth sector in the future.

Sony acquired iCyt Mission Technology, Inc, a manufacturer of flow cytometers, in 2010 and Micronics, Inc, a developer of microfluidics-based diagnostic tools, in 2011.

On 28 September 2012, Olympus and Sony announced that the two companies will establish a joint venture to develop new surgical endoscopes with 4K resolution and 3D capability.

In 2000, Sony was a marginal player in the mobile phone market with a share of less than 1 percent.

In 2001, Sony entered into a joint venture with Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson, forming Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications.

Sony distinguished itself with multimedia-capable mobile phones, which included features such as cameras.

From 2008 to 2010, amid a global recession, Sony Ericsson slashed its workforce by several thousand.

In 2009, Sony Ericsson was the fourth-largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world.

Sony Mobile focuses exclusively on the smartphone market under the Xperia brand.

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Since the late 1990s, Sony has released numerous consumer robots, including dog-shaped robots called AIBO, a music playing robot called Rolly, and a humanoid robot called QRIO.

In 2015, Sony partnered with an autonomous driving startup ZMP INC.

At the CES 2021, Sony unveiled a drone with the brand Airpeak, the smallest of its kind that can incorporate a Sony Alpha camera according to the company, entering the drone business on its own for the first time.

Sony has commanded a dominant share in the charge-coupled device market.

In 2020, Sony has launched the first intelligent vision sensors with AI edge computing capabilies.

Originally, Nintendo requested Sony to develop an add-on for its SNES that would play Compact Discs.

In 1991 Sony announced the add-on, as well as a dedicated console known as the "Play Station".

Sony followed up with the PlayStation 2 in 2000, which was even more successful.

Sony released the PlayStation 3, a high-definition console, in 2006.

Sony extended the brand to the portable games market in 2004 with the PlayStation Portable.

Sony developed the Universal Media Disc optical disc medium for use on the PlayStation Portable.

Sony released a disc-less version of its PlayStation Portable, the PSP Go, in 2009.

Sony went on to release its second portable video game system, PlayStation Vita, in 2011 and 2012.

Sony launched its fourth console, the PlayStation 4, on 15 November 2013, which as of 31 December 2017 has sold 73.

In 2012, Sony rolled most of its consumer content services into the Sony Entertainment Network, the predecessor of PlayStation Network.

Sony has produced many notable movie franchises, including Spider-Man, The Karate Kid and Men in Black.

Sony entered the television and film production market when it acquired Columbia Pictures Entertainment in 1989 for $3.

In 2006 Sony started using ARccOS Protection on some of their film DVDs, but later issued a recall.

In late 2014, Sony Pictures became the target of a hack attack from a clandestine group called Guardians of Peace, weeks before releasing the anti-North Korean comedy film The Interview.

In 2005, Sony BMG faced a copy protection scandal, because its music CDs had installed malware on users' computers that was posing a security risk to affected customers.

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In 2018, Sony bought the rest of the shares in the publisher, making it a wholly owned subsidiary.

Since then, through group-wide and international ventures, Sony has solidified its position in the industry, elevating the business to what is called the "fourth pillar of its entertainment portfolio" according to The Nikkei.

Company behind the commercialization of lithium-ion battery, Sony had been exploring the possibility to manufacture the batteries for electric vehicles.

In 2014, Sony participated within NRG Energy eVgo Ready for Electric Vehicle program, for EV charging parking lots.

In January 2020, Sony unveiled a concept electric car at the Consumer Electronics Show, named Vision-S, designed in collaboration with components manufacturer Magna International.

At the occasion, Sony stated its goal of developing technology for the automotive sector, especially concerning autonomous driving, sensors, and in-car entertainment.

Sony is a kabushiki gaisha registered to the Tokyo Stock Exchange in Japan and the New York Stock Exchange for overseas trading.

Sony encountered financial difficulty in the mid- to late-2000s due to a number of factors: the global financial crisis, increased competition for PlayStation, and the devastating Japanese earthquake of 2011.

Sony faced three consecutive years of losses leading up to 2011.

In January 2013, Sony announced it was selling its US headquarters building for $1.

On 6 February 2014, Sony announced it would trim as many as 5, 000 jobs as it attempts to sell its PC business and focus on mobile and tablets.

In November 2018, Sony posted its earning report for the second quarter showing it has lost about US$480 million in the mobile phone division, prompting another round of downsizing in the unit, including the closure of a manufacturing plant and halving of its workforce.

In November 2011, Sony was ranked ninth in Greenpeace's Guide to Greener Electronics.

Sony fell from its earlier 11th-place ranking due to Greenpeace's claims that Sony had double standards in their waste policies.

Sony has said that they have signed on to have about 75 percent of their Sony Building running on geothermal power.

The "Sony Take Back Recycling Program" allow consumers to recycle the electronics products that they buy from Sony by taking them to eCycle drop-off points around the U S The company has developed a biobattery that runs on sugars and carbohydrates that works similarly to the way living creatures work.

In 2000, Sony faced criticism for a document entitled "NGO Strategy" that was leaked to the press.