Morita was born on 26th January 1921 in Nagoya, Japan. As the oldest sibling he was trained to take over the family business. However Morita found himself being interested in physics and mathematics. He graduated from Osaka Imperial University in 1944 after which he entered the Imperial Japanese Navy and served in the Second World War. This was where he met his future business partner Masaru Ibuka. Upon his return from the war Morita accepted the offer from the Tokyo Institute of Technology to join the faculty. In 1946 Morita and Ibuka founded Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K consisting of twenty employees and a capital of 190,000 yen. The company made the magnetic tape recorder, a pocket sized radio which was fully transistorized and many more innovative products.
In 1960 Akio Morita launched the company in the United States and renamed it ‘Sony’. The same year they produced the very first transistor television. In 1973 Sony got an Emmy Award for creating the Trinitron TV-set technology. Next in line was the home video recorder, the VHS format and then the Walkman, the first portable music player in the world. In 1984 the Discman series was released. Sony Corporation of America was the first Japanese company to be listed in the New York Stock Exchange. Along with his relation with Sony his other affiliations include the vice chairmanship of Japan Business Federation and membership of the Japan-U.S Economic Relations Group. Morita is the third Japanese to be chairman of the Trilateral Commission.