Business World
Company of the month: Sony
A major world corporation one of the world's major corporations.
The Sony Corporation is, today does everything. It makes Hollywood films, records and sells the music of the finest artists and manufactures everything electronic from computer games to video projectors.
Today, the Sony Corporation is rich and powerful, but it grew from small beginnings in the rubble and ashes of post-war Japan.
From Radio to Rice
In September 1945, Masuru Ibuka returned to Tokyo and began work on the third floor of a cracked bomb-damaged buildin He set up the Tokyo Tsushin Kenkyujo, the Tokyo Telecommunications Research Institute, known as Totsuko. Soon Akio Morita (Mr Walkman) joined the group.
After the war, the Japanese were hungry for news from around the world Masura Ibuko and his group of young engineers repaired broken radios and manufactured shortwave converters. When connected to a standard medium wave radio, this converter made it possible to listen to the full range of short wave broadcasts.
In post-war Japan money was very short, and the radio engineers often received part payment in rice. This was welcomed because of the serious food shortages. Later Totsuko started to make an electric rice cooker This was one of Ibuka's w technical failures as it usually produced either overcooked or undercooked rice.
In post-war Japan. imports were very expensive, so many companies produced copies of imported goods. Ibuka was keen to further than merely copying imported technology, he wanted to improve on it At that time, primitive sound recorders made their recordings on metal wire. Totsuko developed one of the early recorders which used magnetic tape.
By 1956 the company's capital had grown from 190,000 yen to 100 million and By 1956 the company's cap the staff had grown to 483 employees. At this time, the company almost exclusively served the domestic market in Japan A major customer was NHK the Japanese National Radio broadcaster.
Gradually, new products began to be sold outside Japan. Amongst the first of these was the transistor radio. The pocketable radio, the TR-63, became popular in Japan and for export.
In 1961 lbuka said "The days of radio are over The future lies in television Their first television sets were black and white, but Sony engineers were soon researching with colour televisions As lbuka said, "Sony is an innovator. We do things that no one has done.
Thcir first success was with professional video tape recorders and later the development of the Sony Trinitron television tube. Later they developed the first black and white) domestic reel-to-reel video recorders.
The Secret of Sony's Success
The continued success of the Sony Corporation has not been without failures But the senior management have failures, some of the expensive consistently shown both vision and courage. The story of the Walkman illustratcs thesc qualities.
After developing the compact tape cassette with Philips. Akio Moria had thu idea that people would like a very small cassette player whteh plaved through headphones The product was first released in Japan It was called the Walkman Japan The company planned