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Wikipedia

Sony

April 09, 2023

"Sony Corporation" redirects here. For the U.S. subsidiary, see Sony Corporation of America. For other uses, see Sony (disambiguation).

Sony Group Corporation (ソニーグループ株式会社, Sonī Gurūpu kabushiki gaisha, /ˈsoʊni/ SOH-nee), commonly known as simply Sony (stylized as SONY), is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan.[7] As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional electronic products, the largest video game console company and the largest video game publisher. Through Sony Entertainment, it is one of the largest music companies (largest music publisher and second largest record label) and the third largest film studio, making it one of the most comprehensive media companies. It is the largest technology and media conglomerate in Japan. It is also recognized as the most cash-rich Japanese company, with net cash reserves of ¥2 trillion.[8][9][10][11]

Sony Group Corporation
Sony's Headquarters Complex at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo
Native name
ソニーグループ株式会社
Sonī Gurūpu kabushiki kaisha
Formerly
  • Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo, Ltd. (1946–1957)
  • Sony Corporation (1958–2021)[a][1]
TypePublic
ISINJP3435000009 
IndustryConglomerate
Founded7 May 1946; 76 years ago (1946-05-07)
Nihonbashi, Chūō, Tokyo, Japan[2]
Founders
HeadquartersSony City,
Minato, Tokyo
,
Japan
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Products
Services
Revenue ¥8.999 trillion (2021)
¥971.965 billion (2021)
¥1.191 trillion (2021)
Total assets ¥26.354 trillion (2021)
Total equity ¥5.621 trillion (2021)
Number of employees
109,700 (2020)[3]
Divisions
  • Electronics Products & Solutions
  • Financial Services
  • Game & Network Services
  • Imaging & Sensing Solutions
  • Music
  • Pictures
  • Others[4]
SubsidiariesSee list of subsidiaries
Websitesony.com
Footnotes / references
Financials as of fiscal year ended 31 March 2021.
References:[5][6]

Sony, with its 55 percent market share in the image sensor market, is the largest manufacturer of image sensors, the second largest camera manufacturer, and is among the semiconductor sales leaders.[12][11][13] It is the world's largest player in the premium TV market for a television of at least 55 inches (140 centimeters) with a price higher than $2,500 as well as second largest TV brand by market share and, as of 2020, the third largest television manufacturer in the world by annual sales figures.[14][15][16][17]

Sony Group Corporation is the holding company of the Sony Group (ソニー・グループ, Sonī Gurūpu), which comprises Sony Corporation, Sony Semiconductor Solutions, Sony Entertainment (Sony Pictures, Sony Music), Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Financial Group, Sony Creative Products, and others.

The company's slogan is We are Sony.[18] Their former slogans were The One and Only (1979–1982), It's a Sony (1981–2005), like.no.other (2005–2009),[19] make.believe (2009–2013),[20] and Be Moved (2013–2021).

Sony has a weak tie to the Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG) corporate group, the successor to the Mitsui keiretsu.[21] Sony is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (in which it is a constituent of the Nikkei 225 and TOPIX Core30 indexes) 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.[22]

History

Further information: History of Sony

Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo

Sony began in the wake of World War II. In 1946, Masaru Ibuka started an electronics shop in Shirokiya,[23] a department store building in the Nihonbashi area of Tokyo. The company started with a capital of ¥190,000[24] and a total of eight employees.[25] On 7 May 1946, Ibuka was joined by Akio Morita to establish a company called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo (東京通信工業, Tōkyō Tsūshin Kōgyō) (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation).[26] The company built Japan's first tape recorder, called the Type-G.[26][27] In 1958, the company changed its name to "Sony".[28]

Name

Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo founders Morita and Ibuka realized that to achieve success and grow, their business had to expand to the global market, which required labeling their products with a short and easy brand name.[29] While looking for a romanized name, they at first strongly considered using their initials, TTK. The primary reason they did not is that the railway company Tokyo Kyuko was known as TTK.[26] The company occasionally used the acronym "Totsuko" in Japan, but during his visit to the United States, Morita discovered that Americans had trouble pronouncing that name. Another early name that was tried out for a while was "Tokyo Teletech" until Akio Morita discovered that there was an American company already using Teletech as a brand name.[30]

The 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.[31][32] In 1950s Japan, "sonny boys" was a loan word in Japanese, which connoted smart and presentable young men, which Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka considered themselves to be.[31]

The first Sony-branded product, the TR-55 transistor radio, appeared in 1955, but the company name did not change to Sony until January 1958.[33]

At the time of the change, it was extremely unusual for a Japanese company to use Roman letters to spell its name instead of writing it in kanji. The move was not without opposition: TTK's principal bank at the time, Mitsui, had strong feelings about the name. They pushed for a name such as Sony Electronic Industries, or Sony Teletech. Akio Morita was firm, however, as he did not want the company name tied to any particular industry. Eventually, both Ibuka and Mitsui Bank's chairman gave their approval.[26]

Globalization

 
A Sony TR-730 transistor radio made in Japan, c. 1960

According to Schiffer, Sony's TR-63 radio "cracked open the U.S. market and launched the new industry of consumer microelectronics."[34] By the mid-1950s, American teens had begun buying portable transistor radios in huge numbers, helping to propel the fledgling industry from an estimated 100,000 units in 1955 to 5 million units by the end of 1968.[citation needed]

Sony co-founder Akio Morita founded Sony Corporation of America in 1960.[25] In the process, he was struck by the mobility of employees between American companies, which was unheard of in Japan at that time.[25] When he returned to Japan, he encouraged experienced, middle-aged employees of other companies to reevaluate their careers and consider joining Sony.[25] The company filled many positions in this manner, and inspired other Japanese companies to do the same.[25] Moreover, Sony played a major role in the development of Japan as a powerful exporter during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s,[35] supplying the U.S. Military with bomb parts used in the Vietnam War.[36] It also helped to significantly improve American perceptions of "made in Japan" products.[37] Known for its production quality, Sony was able to charge above-market prices for its consumer electronics and resisted lowering prices.[37]

In 1971, Masaru Ibuka handed the position of president over to his co-founder Akio Morita. Sony began a life insurance company in 1979, one of its many peripheral businesses. Amid a global recession in the early 1980s, electronics sales dropped and the company was forced to cut prices.[37] Sony's profits fell sharply. "It's over for Sony", one analyst concluded. "The company's best days are behind it."[37]

Around that time, Norio Ohga took up the role of president. He encouraged the development of the compact disc (CD) in the 1970s and 1980s, and of the PlayStation in the early 1990s. Ohga went on to purchase CBS Records in 1988 and Columbia Pictures in 1989, greatly expanding Sony's media presence. Ohga would succeed Morita as chief executive officer in 1989.[38][citation needed]

Under the vision of co-founder Akio Morita[39] and his successors, the company had aggressively expanded into new businesses.[35] Part of its motivation for doing so was the pursuit of "convergence", linking film, music and digital electronics via the Internet.[35] This expansion proved unrewarding and unprofitable,[35] threatening Sony's ability to charge a premium on its products[39] as well as its brand name.[39] In 2005, Howard Stringer replaced Nobuyuki Idei as chief executive officer, marking the first time that a foreigner had run a major Japanese electronics firm. Stringer helped to reinvigorate the company's struggling media businesses, encouraging blockbusters such as Spider-Man while cutting 9,000 jobs.[35] He hoped to sell off peripheral business and focus the company again on electronics.[39] Furthermore, he aimed to increase cooperation between business units,[39] which he described as "silos" operating in isolation from one another.[40] In a bid to provide a unified brand for its global operations, Sony introduced a slogan known as "make.believe" in 2009.[38][citation needed]

 
Sony Style store in Bangkok, Thailand
 
Sony Store (after rebranding from Sony Style[41]) in Markville Shopping Centre, Canada

Despite some successes, the company faced continued struggles in the mid- to late-2000s.[35] In 2012, Kazuo Hirai was promoted to president and CEO, replacing Stringer. Shortly thereafter, Hirai outlined his company-wide initiative, named "One Sony" to revive Sony from years of financial losses and bureaucratic management structure, which proved difficult for former CEO Stringer to accomplish, partly due to differences in business culture and native languages between Stringer and some of Sony's Japanese divisions and subsidiaries. Hirai outlined three major areas of focus for Sony's electronics business, which include imaging technology, gaming and mobile technology, as well as a focus on reducing the major losses from the television business.[42]

 
Sony Store in Nagoya, Japan

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 $7.8 billion over a decade.[43] Later that month, they announced that they would be closing 20 stores.[44] In April, the company announced that they would be selling 9.5 million shares in Square Enix (roughly 8.2 percent of the game company's total shares) in a deal worth approximately $48 million.[45] In May 2014 the company announced it was forming two joint ventures with Shanghai Oriental Pearl Group to manufacture and market Sony's PlayStation game consoles and associated software in China.[46]

In 2015, Sony purchased Toshiba's image sensor business.[47]

It was reported in December 2016 by multiple news outlets that Sony was considering restructuring its U.S. operations by merging its TV & film business, Sony Pictures Entertainment, with its gaming business, Sony Interactive Entertainment. According to the reports, such a restructuring would have placed Sony Pictures under Sony Interactive's CEO, Andrew House, though House wouldn't have taken over day-to-day operations of the film studio.[48][49][50] According to one report, Sony was set to make a final decision on the possibility of the merger of the TV, film, & gaming businesses by the end of its fiscal year in March of the following year (2017).[48]

In 2017, Sony sold its lithium-ion battery business to Murata Manufacturing.[51][52][53]

In 2019, Sony merged its mobile, TV and camera businesses.[54][55]

On 1 April 2020, Sony Electronics Corporation was established as an intermediate holding company to own and oversee its electronics and IT solutions businesses.

On 19 May 2020, the company announced that it would rename Sony Group Corporation as of 1 April 2021. Subsequently, Sony Electronics Corporation would be renamed to Sony Corporation.[56] On the same day the company announced that it would turn Sony Financial Holdings (currently Sony Financial Group), of which Sony already owns 65.06% of shares, to a wholly owned subsidiary through a takeover bid.[57]

On 1 April 2021, Sony Corporation was renamed Sony Group Corporation. On the same day, Sony Mobile Communications Inc. absorbed Sony Electronics Corporation, Sony Imaging Products & Solutions Inc., and Sony Home Entertainment & Sound Products Inc. and changed its trade name to Sony Corporation.[58]

Formats and technologies

Further information: List of Sony trademarks

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 Digital Compact Cassette standard introduced by Philips,[59] with which Sony went on to enjoy a decades-long technological relationship in various areas. Sony (either alone or with partners) has introduced several of the most popular recording formats, including the 3.5-inch floppy disk, compact disc and Blu-ray disc.[60]

Video recording

 
A rare Japanese market Betamax TV/VCR combo, the Model SL-MV1

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.[61] The company subsequently launched the Betamax format in 1975.[62] 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.[63] In the end, VHS gained critical mass in the marketbase and became the worldwide standard for consumer VCRs.[63]

Betamax is, for all practical purposes, an obsolete format. Sony's professional-oriented component video format called Betacam, which was derived from Betamax, was used until 2016 when Sony announced it was stopping production of all remaining 1/2-inch video tape recorders and players, including the Digital Betacam format.[64]

In 1985, Sony launched their Handycam products and the Video8 format.[65] Video8 and the follow-on hi-band Hi8 format became popular in the consumer camcorder market. In 1987 Sony launched the 4 mm DAT or Digital Audio Tape as a new digital audio tape standard.[66]

Visual display

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.[67] It was widely used in other Sony's products as well, including computer monitors, laptops, and smartphones.[68] In 2013, Sony released a new line of televisions with an improved version of the technology, which incorporated quantum dots in the backlight system. It was the first commercial use of quantum dots.[69][70]

In 2012, the company revealed a prototype of an ultrafine RGB LED display, which it calls the Crystal LED Display.[71]

Audio recording

 
First Sony Walkman TPS-L2 from 1979 (Expo in Sony Building at Ginza, Chuo-Ku, Tokyo)

Sony used the Compact Cassette format in many of its tape recorders and players, including the Walkman, the world's first portable music player.[72] 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.[73] 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. Until late 2004, Sony's Network Walkman line of digital portable music players did not support the MP3 standard natively.

In 2004, Sony built upon the MiniDisc format by releasing Hi-MD. Hi-MD allows the playback and recording of audio on newly introduced 1 GB Hi-MD discs in addition to playback and recording on regular MiniDiscs. In addition to saving audio on the discs, Hi-MD allows the storage of computer files such as documents, videos and photos.

Audio encoding

In 1993, Sony challenged the industry standard Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound format with a newer and more advanced proprietary motion picture digital audio format called SDDS (Sony Dynamic Digital Sound).[74] This format employed eight channels (7.1) of audio opposed to just six used in Dolby Digital 5.1 at the time.[74] Ultimately, SDDS has been vastly overshadowed by the preferred DTS (Digital Theatre System) and Dolby Digital standards in the motion picture industry. SDDS was solely developed for use in the theatre circuit; Sony never intended to develop a home theatre version of SDDS.[75][76]

Sony and Philips jointly developed the Sony-Philips digital interface format (S/PDIF) and the high-fidelity audio system SACD. The latter became entrenched in a format war with DVD-Audio. Still, neither gained a major foothold with the general public. CDs had been preferred by consumers because of the ubiquitous presence of CD drives in consumer devices until the early 2000s when the iPod and streaming services became available.[77]

In 2015, Sony introduced LDAC, a proprietary audio coding technology which allows streaming high-resolution audio over Bluetooth connections at up to 990 kbit/s at 32 bit/96 kHz. Sony also contributed it as part of the Android Open Source Project starting from Android 8.0 "Oreo", enabling every OEM to integrate this standard into their own Android devices freely. However the decoder library is proprietary, so receiving devices require licenses. On 17 September 2019, the Japan Audio Society (JAS) certified LDAC with their Hi-Res Audio Wireless certification. Currently the only codecs with the Hi-Res Audio Wireless certification are LDAC and LHDC, another competing standard.

Optical storage

 
Front side of a Sony 200GB Blu-ray disc

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.[78] In 1983, the two company jointly announced the Compact Disc (CD). 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. It launched write-once optical discs (WO) and magneto-optical discs which were around 125MB size for the specific use of archival data storage, in 1986 and 1988 respectively.[79]

In the early 1990s, two high-density optical storage standards were being developed: one was the MultiMedia Compact Disc (MMCD), backed by Philips and Sony, and the other was the Super Density Disc (SD), supported by Toshiba and many others. Philips and Sony abandoned their MMCD format and agreed upon Toshiba's SD format with only one modification. The unified disc format was called DVD and was introduced in 1997.

Sony was one of the leading developers of the Blu-ray optical disc format, the newest standard for disc-based content delivery. The first Blu-ray players became commercially available in 2006. The format emerged as the standard for HD media over the competing format, Toshiba's HD DVD, after a two-year-long high-definition optical disc format war.

Sony's laser communication devices for small satellites rely on the technologies developed for the company's optical disc products.[80]

Disk storage

In 1983, Sony introduced 90 mm micro diskettes, better known as 3.5-inch (89 mm) floppy disks, which it had developed at a time when there were 4" floppy disks, and many variations from different companies, to replace the then on-going 5.25" floppy disks. Sony had great success and the format became dominant. 3.5" floppy disks gradually became obsolete as they were replaced by current media formats. Sony held more than a 70 percent share of the market when it decided to pull the plug on the format in 2010.[81][82]

Flash memory

In 1998, Sony launched the Memory Stick format, the flash memory cards for use in Sony lines of digital cameras and portable music players. It has seen little support outside of Sony's own products, with Secure Digital cards (SD) commanding considerably greater popularity. Sony has made updates to the Memory Stick format with Memory Stick Duo and Memory Stick Micro. The company has also released USB flash drive products, branded under the Micro Vault line.[83]

Communication

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 (NFC) with Philips. The standard is largely offered in two forms, either chips embedded in smartphones or plastic cards with chips embedded in them. Sony plans to implement this technology in train systems across Asia.[84]

In 2019, Sony launched the ELTRES, the company's proprietary low-power wide-area wireless communication (LPWAN) standard.[85]

Video Gaming

Until 1991, Sony had little direct involvement with the video game industry. The company supplied components for other consoles, such as the sound chip for the Super Famicom from Nintendo, and operated a video game studio, Sony Imagesoft.[86] As part of a joint project between Nintendo and Sony that began as early as 1988, the two companies worked to create a CD-ROM version of the Super Famicom,[87] though Nintendo denied the existence of the Sony deal as late as March 1991.[88] At the Consumer Electronics Show in June 1991, Sony revealed a Super Famicom with a built-in CD-ROM drive that incorporated Green Book technology or CD-i, called "Play Station" (also known as SNES-CD). However, a day after the announcement at CES, Nintendo announced that it would be breaking its partnership with Sony, opting to go with Philips instead but using the same technology.[89] The deal was broken by Nintendo after they were unable to come to an agreement on how revenue would be split between the two companies.[89] The breaking of the partnership infuriated Sony President Norio Ohga, who responded by appointing Kutaragi with the responsibility of developing the PlayStation project to rival Nintendo.[89]

 
The sole remaining prototype of Sony's original "PlayStation", a Super NES with a built-in CD-ROM drive

At that time, negotiations were still on-going between Nintendo and Sony, with Nintendo offering Sony a "non-gaming role" regarding their new partnership with Philips. This proposal was swiftly rejected by Kutaragi who was facing increasing criticism over his work with regard to entering the video game industry from within Sony. Negotiations officially ended in May 1992 and in order to decide the fate of the PlayStation project, a meeting was held in June 1992, consisting of Sony President Ohga, PlayStation Head Kutaragi and several senior members of Sony's board. At the meeting, Kutaragi unveiled a proprietary CD-ROM-based system he had been working on which involved playing video games with 3D graphics to the board. Eventually, Sony President Ohga decided to retain the project after being reminded by Kutaragi of the humiliation he suffered from Nintendo. Nevertheless, due to strong opposition from a majority present at the meeting as well as widespread internal opposition to the project by the older generation of Sony executives, Kutaragi and his team had to be shifted from Sony's headquarters to Sony Music, a completely separate financial entity owned by Sony, so as to retain the project and maintain relationships with Philips for the MMCD development project (which helped lead to the creation of the DVD)

Continued research and development

In 2021, the WIPO’s annual review of the World Intellectual Property Indicators report ranked Sony's as ninth in the world for the number of patent applications published under the PCT System. 1,793 patent applications were published by Sony during 2020.[90] This position is up from their previous ranking as 13th in 2019 with 1,566 applications.[91]

Business units

Further information: List of assets owned by Sony

Best known for its electronic products, Sony offers a wide variety of product lines in many areas. At its peak, it was dubbed as a "corporate octopus", for its sprawling ventures from private insurance to chemicals to cosmetics to home shopping to a Tokyo-based French food joint, in addition its core businesses such as electronics and entertainment.[39] Even after it has unwound many business units including Sony Chemicals and Vaio PC, Sony still runs diverse businesses.

As of 2020, Sony is organized into the following business segments: Game & Network Services (G&NS), Music, Pictures, Electronics Products & Solutions (EP&S), Imaging & Sensing Solutions (I&SS), Financial Services, and Others.[92] Usually, each business segment has a handful of corresponding intermediate holding companies under which all the related businesses are folded into, such as Columbia Records being part of Sony Music Group, a subsidiary and, at the same time, a holding company for Sony's music businesses, along with SMEJ.

Electronics Products & Solutions

 
Sony at Westfield Riccarton shopping centre in Christchurch, New Zealand

Sony Corporation (Sony Electronics Corporation until 1 April 2021[93]) is the electronics business unit of the Sony Group. It primarily conducts research and development (R&D), planning, designing, manufacturing and marketing for electronics products. Sony Global Manufacturing & Operations Corporation (SGMO) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Corporation and responsible for managing manufacturing operations both in Japan and overseas, through its own factories as well as third party contract manufacturers.

Audio

In 1979, Sony released the world's first portable music player, the Walkman, bundled with the MDL-3L2 headphones. This line fostered a fundamental change in music listening habits by allowing people to carry music with them and listen to music through lightweight headphones.[72][94] Originally used to refer to portable audio cassette players, the Walkman brand has been widely adopted by the company to encompass its portable digital audio and video players as well as a line of former Sony Ericsson mobile phones. In the case of optical disc players, the Discman brand was used until the late 1990s. In 1999 Sony's first portable digital audio players were introduced; one was a player using Memory Stick flash storage created by the Walkman division, and the other was a smaller pen-sized player with embedded flash storage created by the Vaio division; both accompanied with Sony's OpenMG copyright protection technology and PC software for music transfer.[95][96] Sony continue to develop Walkman digital audio players.

Sony is a major audio products manufacturer and one of the active noise control technology leaders.[97][98]

Video

 
The logo of Bravia television. Its backronym is "Best Resolution Audio Visual Integrated Architecture".

Sony produced the TV8-301, the world's first all-transistor television, in 1959.[99] In 1968, the company introduced the Trinitron brand name for its lines of aperture grille cathode ray tube televisions and afterwards computer monitors. 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. The company discontinued the last Trinitron-based television set in the US in early 2007. The end of Trinitron marked the end of Sony's analog television sets and monitors.

Sony used the LCD WEGA name for its LCD TVs until summer 2005. The company then introduced the BRAVIA name. 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. All Sony high-definition flat-panel LCD televisions in North America have carried the logo for BRAVIA since 2005. In 2006, Sony lost its decades-long No.1 market share in the global television market. In November 2007, the Sony XEL-1, the first OLED television, was released and manufactured for two years. Later in 2013, Sony demonstrated the first 4K OLED television.[100][101] As of 2012, Sony was the third-largest maker of televisions in the world and the business unit had been unprofitable for eight consecutive years.[102]

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.[103] In December 2011, Sony agreed to sell all stake in an LCD joint venture with Samsung Electronics (S-LCD) for about $940 million.[104] On 28 March 2012, Sony and Sharp announced that they have agreed to further amend the joint venture agreement originally executed by the parties in July 2009, as amended in April 2011, for the establishment and operation of Sharp Display Products Corporation ("SDP"), a joint venture to produce and sell large-sized LCD panels and modules.[105] The agreement was eventually terminated as Sony parted ways.[106] 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.[107]

In 2017, Sony launched OLED televisions under the BRAVIA brand.[108]

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

Photography and videography

 
A Sony Cyber-shot digital camera
 
A Sony α77 DSLR camera

Sony offers a wide range of digital cameras. Its point-and-shoot models are branded Cyber-shot, while DSLRs and mirrorless models are branded Alpha, though Sony no longer makes DSLRs. It also produces action cameras and camcorders, with the company's cinema-grade products being sold under the CineAlta name.

Sony demonstrated a prototype of the Sony Mavica in 1981 and released it for the consumer market in 1988. The first Cyber-shot was introduced in 1996. Sony's market share of the digital camera market fell from a high of 20% to 9% by 2005.[109][40]

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. They also started a new lens mount system, which was the E-mount. There were quite a few NEX models out there, when Sony decided to melt the NEX series into the Alpha series. The first Alpha MILC was the α3000, which was introduced in August 2013. It was followed by the Full-Frame α7 and α7R in October, then the successors of the NEX-5, the NEX-6 and NEX-7, the α5000 and the α6000 in 2014. The α6000 became the most popular MILC ever and Sony became the largest MILC manufacturer.

Computing

 
Notebook Sony Vaio. Sony has axed its loss-making PC business in 2014.

Sony produced computers (MSX home computers and NEWS workstations) during the 1980s. The company withdrew from the computer business around 1990. Sony entered again into the global computer market under the new VAIO brand, began in 1996. Short for "Video Audio Integrated Operation", the line was the first computer brand to highlight visual-audio features.[40]

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.[110][111][112]

In a bid to join the tablet computer market, the company launched its Sony Tablet line of Android tablets in 2011. Since 2012, Sony's Android products have been marketed under the Xperia brand used for its smartphones.[113]

On 4 February 2014, Sony announced that it would sell its VAIO PC business due to poor sales[114] and Japanese company Japan Industrial Partners (JIP) will purchase the VAIO brand, with the deal finalized by the end of March 2014.[115] As of 2018, Sony maintained a 5% stake in the new, independent company.

Healthcare and biotechnology

Sony has targeted medical, healthcare and biotechnology business as a growth sector in the future. The company acquired iCyt Mission Technology, Inc. (renamed Sony Biotechnology Inc. in 2012), a manufacturer of flow cytometers, in 2010 and Micronics, Inc., a developer of microfluidics-based diagnostic tools, in 2011.

In 2012, Sony announced that it would acquire all shares of So-net Entertainment Corporation, the largest shareholder of M3, Inc., an operator of portal sites (m3.com, MR-kun, MDLinx and MEDI:GATE) for healthcare professionals.

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 (or higher) and 3D capability.[116] Sony Olympus Medical Solutions Inc. (Sony 51%, Olympus 49%) was established on 16 April 2013.[117]

On 28 February 2014, Sony, M3 and Illumina established a joint venture called P5, Inc. to provide a genome analysis service for research institutions and enterprises in Japan.[118]

Mobility

 
Xperia, the product device name for a range of smartphones from Sony
 
A historical Sony CMD-CD5 mobile phone
 
Sony Xperia Z, introduced and released in 2013. The first smartphone with a Full HD display.

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.[119] Initial sales were rocky, and the company posted losses in 2001 and 2002. However, Sony Ericsson reached a profit in 2003. The company distinguished itself with multimedia-capable mobile phones, which included features such as cameras. These were unusual at the time. Despite their innovations, Sony Ericsson faced intense competition from Apple's iPhone, which was released in 2007. 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 (after Nokia, Samsung and LG).[120] By 2010, its market share had fallen to sixth place.[121] Sony acquired Ericsson's share of the venture in 2012 for over US$1 billion.[119] Sony Mobile focuses exclusively on the smartphone market under the Xperia brand.

In 2013, Sony contributed to around two percent of the mobile phone market with 37 million mobile phones sold.[122] Sony Mobile's sales reached a peak in 2014 with 40 million handsets, the volume has since decreased. Sony shipped 13.5 million phones in 2017, 6.5 million in 2018, and 2.9 million handsets in FY 2020.[123]

Robotics

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. Despite being a pioneer in the field, Sony had ceased robotics-related operations for 10 years due to financial difficulties, until it decided to revive them in 2016.[124]

In 2015, Sony partnered with an autonomous driving startup ZMP INC. to establish an aerial surveillance and reconnaissance drone manufacturer named Aerosense.[125] 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.[126]

Imaging & Sensing Solutions

Sony traces its roots in the semiconductor business back to 1954, when it became the first Japanese company to commercialize the transistor, invented and licensed by Bell Labs, whilst some of the biggest and well-established names in Japan at the time like Toshiba and Mitsubishi Electric initially stuck with vacuum tubes they had been thriving on; despite being an expert on the vacuum tube himself, Ibuka saw potential of the novel technology and had Morita negotiate the terms for licensing, making Sony into one of the earliest and the youngest licensees of the transistor, together with Texas Instruments.[127][128][129] In 1957, Sony employee Leo Esaki and his colleagues invented a tunnel diode (usually referred to as Esaki diode) by which they discovered the quantum tunneling effect in solids, for which Esaki received the Nobel prize in Physics in 1973.[130] Sony has commanded a dominant share in the charge-coupled device market.[131]

As of 2020, Sony is the world's largest manufacturer of CMOS image sensors as its chips are widely used in digital cameras, tablet computers, smartphones, drones and more recently, self-driving systems in automobiles.[132]

As of 2020, the company, through its chip business arm Sony Semiconductor Solutions, designs, manufactures, and sells a wide range of semiconductors and electronic components, including image sensors (HAD CCD, Exmor), image processors (BIONZ), laser diodes, system LSIs, mixed-signal LSIs, emerging memory storage, emerging displays (microLED, microOLED, and holographic display), multi-functional microcomputer (SPRESENSE), etc.[133]

In 2020, Sony has launched the first intelligent vision sensors with AI edge computing capabilies.[134]

Game & Network Services

Main article: Sony Interactive Entertainment
 
Sony Interactive Entertainment headquarters in San Mateo, California

Sony Interactive Entertainment (formerly Sony Computer Entertainment) is best known for producing the popular line of PlayStation consoles. The line grew out of a failed partnership with Nintendo. Originally, Nintendo requested Sony to develop an add-on for its Super Nintendo Entertainment System that would play CD-ROMs. In 1991 Sony announced the add-on, as well as a dedicated console known as the "Play Station". However, a disagreement over software licensing for the console caused the partnership to fall through. Sony then continued the project independently.

Launched in 1994, the first PlayStation gained 61% of global console sales and broke Nintendo's long-standing lead in the market.[135] Sony followed up with the PlayStation 2 in 2000, which was even more successful. The console has become the most successful of all time, selling over 150 million units as of 2011. Sony released the PlayStation 3, a high-definition console, in 2006. It was the first console to use the Blu-ray format, and was considerably more expensive than the competitors Xbox 360 and Wii due to the Cell processor.[40]

Early on, poor sales performance resulted in significant losses for the company, pushing it to sell the console at a loss.[136] The PlayStation 3 sold generally more poorly than its competitors in the early years of its release but managed to overtake the Xbox 360 in global sales later on.[137] It later introduced the PlayStation Move, an accessory that allows players to control video games using motion gestures.

 
The PlayStation 2 is the best-selling video game console of all time.

Sony extended the brand to the portable games market in 2004 with the PlayStation Portable (PSP). The console has sold reasonably, but has taken a second place to a rival handheld, the Nintendo DS. Sony developed the Universal Media Disc (UMD) optical disc medium for use on the PlayStation Portable. Early on, the format was used for movies, but it has since lost major studio support. Sony released a disc-less version of its PlayStation Portable, the PSP Go, in 2009. The company 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 73.6 million units globally.[138]

On 18 March 2014, at GDC, president of SCE Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida announced their new virtual reality technology dubbed Project Morpheus, and later named PlayStation VR, for PlayStation 4. The headset brought VR gaming and non-gaming software to the company's console. According to a report released by Houston-based patent consulting firm LexInnova in May 2015, Sony is leading the virtual reality patent race. According to the firm's analysis of nearly 12,000 patents or patent applications, Sony has 366 virtual reality patents or patent applications.[139] PlayStation VR was released worldwide on 13 October 2016.[140]

On 31 March 2019, the successor to the PlayStation 4 was announced and on 12 November 2020, the PlayStation 5 was released in North America, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore. The console was launched in Indonesia on 22 January 2021. Upon completion of the fiscal quarter, Sony sold 4.5 million PlayStation 5 consoles, keeping pace with the best-selling console of all time, the PlayStation 2.[141]

Pictures and Music

Further information: Sony Entertainment

Sony Entertainment has two divisions: Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Music Group (Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Music Publishing). Sony USA previously owned and operated Sony Trans Com: a technology business that provided in-flight entertainment programming as well as video and audio playback equipment for the airline industry. Sony had purchased the business from Sundstrand Corp. in 1989 and subsequently sold it to Rockwell Collins in 2000.[142][143]

In 2012, Sony rolled most of its consumer content services (including video, music and gaming) into the Sony Entertainment Network, the predecessor of PlayStation Network.

Sony Pictures Entertainment

Main articles: Sony Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan, and Sony Pictures Networks India
 
Sony Pictures Plaza, next to the main studio lot of Sony Pictures in Culver City, California

Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. (SPE) is the television and film production/distribution unit of Sony. With 12.5% box office market share in 2011, the company was ranked third among movie studios.[144] Its group sales in 2010 were US$7.2 billion.[145][146] The company has produced many notable movie franchises, including Spider-Man, The Karate Kid and Men in Black. It has also produced the popular television game shows Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune.

Sony entered the television and film production market when it acquired Columbia Pictures Entertainment in 1989 for $3.4 billion. Columbia lives on in the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of SPE which in turn owns Columbia Pictures and TriStar Pictures among other film production and distribution companies such as Screen Gems, Sony Pictures Classics, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. SPE's television division is known as Sony Pictures Television.

 
The main entrance to the Sony Pictures Entertainment studio lot in Culver City

For the first several years of its existence, Sony Pictures Entertainment performed poorly, leading many to suspect the company would sell off the division.[147] In 2006 Sony started using ARccOS Protection on some of their film DVDs, but later issued a recall.[148]

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.[149]

Sony Music Group and SMEJ

Main articles: Sony Music, Sony Music Publishing, and Sony Music Entertainment Japan

Sony Music Entertainment (also known as SME or Sony Music) is the largest global recorded music company of the "big three" record companies and is controlled by Sony Corporation of America, the United States subsidiary of Sony.

In one of its largest-ever acquisitions, Sony purchased CBS Record Group in 1988 for US$2 billion.[150] In the process, Sony partnered and gained the rights to the ATV catalogue of Michael Jackson, considered by the Guinness Book of World Records to be the most successful entertainer of all time. The acquisition of CBS Records provided the foundation for the formation of Sony Music Entertainment, which Sony established in 1991.

In 1968, Sony and CBS Records had formed a 50:50 joint-venture CBS/Sony Records, later renamed CBS/Sony Group, in Japan. When CBS Records was acquired, a 50% stake in CBS/Sony Group owned by CBS was also transferred to Sony. In March 1988, four wholly owned subsidiaries were folded into CBS/Sony Group and the company was renamed as Sony Music Entertainment Japan (SMEJ). It operates independently of Sony Music as it is directly owned by Japanese Sony.

In 2004, Sony entered into a joint venture with Bertelsmann AG, merging Sony Music Entertainment with Bertelsmann Music Group to create Sony BMG. 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.[151] In 2007, the company acquired Famous Music for US$370 million, gaining the rights to the catalogues of Eminem and Akon, among others. Sony bought out Bertelsmann's share in Sony BMG and formed a new Sony Music Entertainment in 2008. Since then, the company has undergone management changes.

Sony purchased digital music recognition company Gracenote for US$260 million in 2008.[152] Tribune Media Company acquired Gracenote from Sony in 2014 for $170 million.[153]

Besides its record label, Sony operates other music businesses. In 1995, Sony merged its publisher with Michael Jackson's ATV Music Publishing, forming Sony/ATV Music Publishing. At the time, the publishing company was the second largest of its kind in the world. The company owns the publishing rights to over 4 million compositions, including The Beatles' Lennon-McCartney catalogue, Bob Dylan, Eminem, Lady Gaga, Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran, and Taylor Swift.

In 2012, Sony/ATV acquired a majority stake in EMI Music Publishing, becoming the world's largest music publishing company. In 2018, Sony bought the rest of the shares in the publisher, making it a wholly owned subsidiary.[154][155] Since 2016, Sony owns all of Sony/ATV.[156]

Anime

Main articles: Aniplex and Crunchyroll

Sony's entering into the Japanese animation, or anime, business happened in 1995 when its Sony Music Entertainment Japan (SMEJ) division established Aniplex as its subsidiary managing creative productions, which founded A-1 Pictures, the first anime studio of Sony, ten years later. Since then, through group-wide and international ventures,[157] 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.[158]

The anime business operations of Sony are scattered around the group, mainly in its Pictures and Music units, as follows: SMEJ's notable related businesses include Aniplex and its subsidiaries CloverWorks and A-1 Pictures while Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan (SPEJ) operates anime-oriented TV channels like Animax, Kids Station; Aniplex and U.S.-headquartered Sony Pictures co-own U.S.-based anime distribution company Crunchyroll, which since 2022, has become the successor company to Funimation, which it acquired in 2017 and included subsidiaries such as Wakanim (absorbing into Crunchyroll itself) and Madman Anime (to be rebranded as Crunchyroll Pty. Ltd.)[159]

In December 2020, Funimation announced that it would buy AT&T's animation business Crunchyroll for $1.175 billion, which would help the company to compete more globally with entertainment giants such as Netflix.[160] This acquisition was completed in August 2021.[161]

Financial Services

Main article: Sony Financial Group
 
Headquarters of Sony Financial Group in Tokyo, Japan

Sony Financial Group is a holding company for Sony's financial services business which includes Sony Life (in Japan and the Philippines), Sony Assurance, Sony Bank, etc. The unit proved to be the most profitable of Sony's businesses in FY 2005, earning $1.7 billion in profit.[39] Sony Financial's low fees have aided the unit's popularity while threatening Sony's premium brand name.[39]

Others

Electric vehicles and batteries

Further information: Sony Energy Devices Corporation and Sony Honda Mobility

A company behind the commercialization of lithium-ion battery,[162] Sony had been exploring the possibility to manufacture the batteries for electric vehicles.[163][164][165] In 2014, Sony participated within NRG Energy eVgo Ready for Electric Vehicle (REV) program, for EV charging parking lots.[166] However, the company then decided to sell its lithium-ion battery business to Murata Manufacturing in 2016.[167]

In 2015, Sony invested $842 thousand in ZMP INC., drawing speculations that it is contemplating developing self-driving cars.[168] 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.[169] At the occasion, Sony also stated its goal of developing technology for the automotive sector, especially concerning autonomous driving, sensors, and in-car entertainment.[170]

In 2022, Sony Group and Honda launched a joint venture for their electric vehicle partnership, Sony Honda Mobility (SHM), which would deliver its first electric vehicles by 2026 and sell them online, starting in the United States and Japan.[171][172] The joint venture announced their new "Afeela" brand and its first prototype model at the CES 2023.[173]

Corporate information

Institutional ownership

Sony is a kabushiki gaisha registered to the Tokyo Stock Exchange in Japan and the New York Stock Exchange for overseas trading. As of 31 March 2020, the largest shareholders of Sony are as follows:[174]

Finances

As of July 2020, Sony, one of the largest Japanese companies by market capitalization and operating profit, was valued at over $90 billion. At the same period, it was also recognized as the most cash-rich Japanese company, with its net cash reserves of ¥1.8 trillion.[175]

The company was immensely profitable throughout the 1990s and early 2000s in part because of the success of its new PlayStation line. The company 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. The company faced three consecutive years of losses leading up to 2011.[176] While noting the negative effects of intervening circumstances such as natural disasters and fluctuating currency exchange rates, the Financial Times criticized the company for its "lack of resilience" and "inability to gauge the economy," voicing skepticism about Sony's revitalization efforts, given a lack of tangible results.[176]

In September 2000 Sony had a market capitalization of $100 billion; but by December 2011 it had plunged to $18 billion, reflecting falling prospects for Sony but also reflecting grossly inflated share prices of the 'dot-com bubble' years.[177] Net worth, as measured by stockholder equity, has steadily grown from $17.9 billion in March 2002 to $35.6 billion through December 2011.[178] Earnings yield (inverse of the price to earnings ratio) has never been more than 5% and usually much less; thus Sony has always traded in over-priced ranges with the exception of the 2009 market bottom.

On 9 December 2008, Sony announced that it would be cutting 8,000 jobs, dropping 8,000 contractors and reducing its global manufacturing sites by 10% to save $1.1 billion per year.[179]

In April 2012, Sony announced that it would reduce its workforce by 10,000 (6% of its employee base) as part of CEO Kaz Hirai's effort to get the company back into the black. This came after a loss of 520 billion yen (roughly US$6.36 billion) for fiscal 2012, the worst since the company was founded. Accumulation loss for the past four years was 919.32 billion-yen.[180][181] Sony planned to increase its marketing expenses by 30% in 2012.[182] 1,000 of the jobs cut come from the company's mobile phone unit's workforce. 700 jobs will be cut in the 2012–2013 fiscal year and the remaining 300 in the following fiscal year.[183] Sony had revenues of ¥6.493 trillion in 2012 and maintained large reserves of cash, with ¥895 billion on hand as of 2012. In May 2012, Sony's market capitalization was valued at about $15 billion.[184]

Sony's 2009 sales and distribution by geographical region[185]
Geographic region Total sales (in millions of ¥)
Japan 1,873,219
United States 2,512,345
Europe 2,307,658
Other areas 2,041,270

In January 2013, Sony announced it was selling its US headquarters building for $1.1 billion to a consortium led by real estate developer The Chetrit Group.[186]

On 28 January 2014, Moody's Investors Services dropped Sony's credit rating to Ba1—"judged to have speculative elements and a significant credit risk"—saying that the company's "profitability is likely to remain weak and volatile."[187]

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.[188]

In 2014,[189] Sony South Africa closed its TV, Hi-Fi and camera divisions[190] with the purpose of reconsidering its local distribution model and, in 2017, it returned[191][192] facilitated by Premium Brand Distributors (Pty) Ltd.

Sony's Revenue by different market segments[193]
Segment Revenue Financial Year 2017 (in millions of ¥) Financial Year 2018 (in millions of ¥) Change Percentage of Sales Percentage Change (FY 2017 to FY 2018)
Game & Network Services 1,943,812 2,310,872 367,060 22.8 18.9
Music 799,995 807,489 7,494 9.4 0.9
Pictures 1,011,067 986,873 −24,194 11.8 −2.4
Home Entertainment & Sound 1,222,733 1,155,411 −67,322 14.3 −5.5
Imaging Products and Solutions 655,892 670,450 14,558 7.7 2.2
Mobile Communications 723,742 498,000 −225,742 8.5 −31.2
Semiconductors 726,892 770,622 43,730 8.5 6.0
Financial Services 1,228,377 1,282,539 54,162 14.4 4.4
All Other 407,174 345,737 61,437 1.3 −31.0
Total 8,719,684 8,827,993 108,309

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,[194] prompting another round of downsizing in the unit, including the closure of a manufacturing plant and halving of its workforce.[195][196]

Environmental record

In November 2011, Sony was ranked ninth (jointly with Panasonic) in Greenpeace's Guide to Greener Electronics.[197] This chart grades major electronics companies on their environmental work. The company scored 3.6/10, incurring a penalty point for comments it has made in opposition to energy efficiency standards in California. It also risks a further penalty point in future editions for being a member of trade associations that have commented against energy efficiency standards.[198] Together with Philips, Sony receives the highest score for energy policy advocacy after calling on the EU to adopt an unconditional 30% reduction target for greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Meanwhile, it receives full marks for the efficiency of its products.[198] In June 2007, Sony ranked 14th on the Greenpeace guide.[199] Sony fell from its earlier 11th-place ranking due to Greenpeace's claims that Sony had double standards in their waste policies.[200]

As of May 2018 Greenpeace's 2017 Guide to Greener Electronics rated Sony approximately in the middle among electronics manufacturers with a grade of D+.[201]

Since 1976, Sony has had an Environmental Conference.[202] Sony's policies address their effects on global warming, the environment, and resources. They are taking steps to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that they put out as well as regulating the products they get from their suppliers in a process that they call "green procurement".[203] 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 (Recycling) drop-off points around the U.S. The company has also developed a biobattery that runs on sugars and carbohydrates that works similarly to the way living creatures work. This is the most powerful small biobattery to date.[204]

In 2000, Sony faced criticism for a document entitled "NGO Strategy" that was leaked to the press. The document involved the company's surveillance of environmental activists in an attempt to plan how to counter their movements. It specifically mentioned environmental groups that were trying to pass laws that held electronics-producing companies responsible for the cleanup of the toxic chemicals contained in their merchandise.[205]

Cartel

In 2007 an investigation launched in 2002 by the European Commission culminated in Sony, Fuji and Maxell receiving a total of 110 million US dollar fine for fixing professional videotape prices between the years 1999 and 2002 through regular meetings and other illegal contracts; at the time the three corporations shared a combined 85% control of the market. Sony's part of the fine was raised by a third for trying to obstruct the investigation by refusing to answer inquiries made by the EU officials and shredding of evidence during the multiple law-enforcement raids.[206][207] During the year 2001 prior to the investigation Sony sold professional videotapes for a total of 115 million euros inside the EU.

Community engagement

  • EYE SEE project
    Sony Corporation is actively involved in the EYE SEE project conducted by UNICEF. EYE SEE digital photography workshops have been run for children in Argentina, Tunisia, Mali, South Africa, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Rwanda, Liberia and Pakistan.[208][209]
  • South Africa Mobile Library Project
    Sony assists The South Africa Primary Education Support Initiative (SAPESI) through financial donations and children book donations to the South Africa Mobile Library Project.[210]
  • The Sony Canada Charitable Foundation
    The Sony Canada Charitable Foundation (SCCF) is a non-profit organization which supports three key charities; the Make-A-Wish Canada, the United Way of Canada and the EarthDay and ECOKIDS program.
  • Sony Foundation and You Can
    After the 2011 Queensland floods and Victorian bushfires, Sony Music released benefit albums with money raised going to the Sony Foundation.[211] You Can is the youth cancer program of Sony Foundation.[212]
  • Open Planet Ideas Crowdsourcing Project
    Sony launched its Open Planet Ideas Crowdsourcing Project, in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund and the design group, IDEO.[213]
  • Street Football Stadium Project
    On the occasion of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, Sony partnered with streetfootballworld and launched the Street Football Stadium Project to support football-based educational programmes in local communities across Latin America and Brazil.[214] More than 25 Street Stadiums were developed since the project's inception.[215]
  • The Sony Global Relief Fund for COVID-19
    During the COVID-19 pandemic, Sony launched a relief fund in line with other media and tech companies to aid individuals working in the medical, education, and entertainment sectors.[216]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Since April 2021, the "Sony Corporation" legal name is used for Sony Group's electronics business that was previously known as "Sony Electronics Corporation".

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Further reading

External links

  • Official website

April 09, 2023
sony, corporation, redirects, here, subsidiary, corporation, america, other, uses, disambiguation, group, corporation, ソニーグループ株式会社, sonī, gurūpu, kabushiki, gaisha, commonly, known, simply, stylized, sony, japanese, multinational, conglomerate, corporation, he. Sony Corporation redirects here For the U S subsidiary see Sony Corporation of America For other uses see Sony disambiguation Sony Group Corporation ソニーグループ株式会社 Soni Gurupu kabushiki gaisha ˈ s oʊ n i SOH nee commonly known as simply Sony stylized as SONY is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato Tokyo Japan 7 As a major technology company it operates as one of the world s largest manufacturers of consumer and professional electronic products the largest video game console company and the largest video game publisher Through Sony Entertainment it is one of the largest music companies largest music publisher and second largest record label and the third largest film studio making it one of the most comprehensive media companies It is the largest technology and media conglomerate in Japan It is also recognized as the most cash rich Japanese company with net cash reserves of 2 trillion 8 9 10 11 Sony Group CorporationSony s Headquarters Complex at Sony City in Minato TokyoNative nameソニーグループ株式会社Romanized nameSoni Gurupu kabushiki kaishaFormerlyTokyo Tsushin Kogyo Ltd 1946 1957 Sony Corporation 1958 2021 a 1 TypePublicTraded asTYO 6758 NYSE SONY Nikkei 225 component 6758 TOPIX Core30 component 6758 ISINJP3435000009 IndustryConglomerateFounded7 May 1946 76 years ago 1946 05 07 Nihonbashi Chuō Tokyo Japan 2 FoundersMasaru Ibuka Akio MoritaHeadquartersSony City Minato Tokyo JapanArea servedWorldwideKey peopleKenichiro Yoshida Chairman and CEO Hiroki Totoki President and COO ProductsCameras Computer hardware Consumer electronics Films Music Robots Semiconductors Telecommunications equipment TV shows Video gamesServicesAdvertising agency Banking Credit finance Financial services Insurance Network servicesRevenue 8 999 trillion 2021 Operating income 971 965 billion 2021 Net income 1 191 trillion 2021 Total assets 26 354 trillion 2021 Total equity 5 621 trillion 2021 Number of employees109 700 2020 3 DivisionsElectronics Products amp Solutions Financial Services Game amp Network Services Imaging amp Sensing Solutions Music Pictures Others 4 SubsidiariesSee list of subsidiariesWebsitesony comFootnotes referencesFinancials as of fiscal year ended 31 March 2021 update References 5 6 Sony with its 55 percent market share in the image sensor market is the largest manufacturer of image sensors the second largest camera manufacturer and is among the semiconductor sales leaders 12 11 13 It is the world s largest player in the premium TV market for a television of at least 55 inches 140 centimeters with a price higher than 2 500 as well as second largest TV brand by market share and as of 2020 the third largest television manufacturer in the world by annual sales figures 14 15 16 17 Sony Group Corporation is the holding company of the Sony Group ソニー グループ Soni Gurupu which comprises Sony Corporation Sony Semiconductor Solutions Sony Entertainment Sony Pictures Sony Music Sony Interactive Entertainment Sony Financial Group Sony Creative Products and others The company s slogan is We are Sony 18 Their former slogans were The One and Only 1979 1982 It s a Sony 1981 2005 like no other 2005 2009 19 make believe 2009 2013 20 and Be Moved 2013 2021 Sony has a weak tie to the Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group SMFG corporate group the successor to the Mitsui keiretsu 21 Sony is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in which it is a constituent of the Nikkei 225 and TOPIX Core30 indexes 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 22 Contents 1 History 1 1 Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo 1 2 Name 1 3 Globalization 2 Formats and technologies 2 1 Video recording 2 2 Visual display 2 3 Audio recording 2 4 Audio encoding 2 5 Optical storage 2 6 Disk storage 2 7 Flash memory 2 8 Communication 2 9 Video Gaming 2 10 Continued research and development 3 Business units 3 1 Electronics Products amp Solutions 3 1 1 Audio 3 1 2 Video 3 1 3 Photography and videography 3 1 4 Computing 3 1 5 Healthcare and biotechnology 3 1 6 Mobility 3 1 7 Robotics 3 2 Imaging amp Sensing Solutions 3 3 Game amp Network Services 3 4 Pictures and Music 3 4 1 Sony Pictures Entertainment 3 4 2 Sony Music Group and SMEJ 3 4 3 Anime 3 5 Financial Services 3 6 Others 3 6 1 Electric vehicles and batteries 4 Corporate information 4 1 Institutional ownership 4 2 Finances 4 3 Environmental record 4 4 Cartel 4 5 Community engagement 5 See also 6 Notes 7 References 8 Further reading 9 External linksHistoryFurther information History of Sony Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo Sony began in the wake of World War II In 1946 Masaru Ibuka started an electronics shop in Shirokiya 23 a department store building in the Nihonbashi area of Tokyo The company started with a capital of 190 000 24 and a total of eight employees 25 On 7 May 1946 Ibuka was joined by Akio Morita to establish a company called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo 東京通信工業 Tōkyō Tsushin Kōgyō Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation 26 The company built Japan s first tape recorder called the Type G 26 27 In 1958 the company changed its name to Sony 28 Name Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo founders Morita and Ibuka realized that to achieve success and grow their business had to expand to the global market which required labeling their products with a short and easy brand name 29 While looking for a romanized name they at first strongly considered using their initials TTK The primary reason they did not is that the railway company Tokyo Kyuko was known as TTK 26 The company occasionally used the acronym Totsuko in Japan but during his visit to the United States Morita discovered that Americans had trouble pronouncing that name Another early name that was tried out for a while was Tokyo Teletech until Akio Morita discovered that there was an American company already using Teletech as a brand name 30 The 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 31 32 In 1950s Japan sonny boys was a loan word in Japanese which connoted smart and presentable young men which Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka considered themselves to be 31 The first Sony branded product the TR 55 transistor radio appeared in 1955 but the company name did not change to Sony until January 1958 33 At the time of the change it was extremely unusual for a Japanese company to use Roman letters to spell its name instead of writing it in kanji The move was not without opposition TTK s principal bank at the time Mitsui had strong feelings about the name They pushed for a name such as Sony Electronic Industries or Sony Teletech Akio Morita was firm however as he did not want the company name tied to any particular industry Eventually both Ibuka and Mitsui Bank s chairman gave their approval 26 Globalization A Sony TR 730 transistor radio made in Japan c 1960 According to Schiffer Sony s TR 63 radio cracked open the U S market and launched the new industry of consumer microelectronics 34 By the mid 1950s American teens had begun buying portable transistor radios in huge numbers helping to propel the fledgling industry from an estimated 100 000 units in 1955 to 5 million units by the end of 1968 citation needed Sony co founder Akio Morita founded Sony Corporation of America in 1960 25 In the process he was struck by the mobility of employees between American companies which was unheard of in Japan at that time 25 When he returned to Japan he encouraged experienced middle aged employees of other companies to reevaluate their careers and consider joining Sony 25 The company filled many positions in this manner and inspired other Japanese companies to do the same 25 Moreover Sony played a major role in the development of Japan as a powerful exporter during the 1960s 1970s and 1980s 35 supplying the U S Military with bomb parts used in the Vietnam War 36 It also helped to significantly improve American perceptions of made in Japan products 37 Known for its production quality Sony was able to charge above market prices for its consumer electronics and resisted lowering prices 37 In 1971 Masaru Ibuka handed the position of president over to his co founder Akio Morita Sony began a life insurance company in 1979 one of its many peripheral businesses Amid a global recession in the early 1980s electronics sales dropped and the company was forced to cut prices 37 Sony s profits fell sharply It s over for Sony one analyst concluded The company s best days are behind it 37 Around that time Norio Ohga took up the role of president He encouraged the development of the compact disc CD in the 1970s and 1980s and of the PlayStation in the early 1990s Ohga went on to purchase CBS Records in 1988 and Columbia Pictures in 1989 greatly expanding Sony s media presence Ohga would succeed Morita as chief executive officer in 1989 38 citation needed Under the vision of co founder Akio Morita 39 and his successors the company had aggressively expanded into new businesses 35 Part of its motivation for doing so was the pursuit of convergence linking film music and digital electronics via the Internet 35 This expansion proved unrewarding and unprofitable 35 threatening Sony s ability to charge a premium on its products 39 as well as its brand name 39 In 2005 Howard Stringer replaced Nobuyuki Idei as chief executive officer marking the first time that a foreigner had run a major Japanese electronics firm Stringer helped to reinvigorate the company s struggling media businesses encouraging blockbusters such as Spider Man while cutting 9 000 jobs 35 He hoped to sell off peripheral business and focus the company again on electronics 39 Furthermore he aimed to increase cooperation between business units 39 which he described as silos operating in isolation from one another 40 In a bid to provide a unified brand for its global operations Sony introduced a slogan known as make believe in 2009 38 citation needed Sony Style store in Bangkok Thailand Sony Store after rebranding from Sony Style 41 in Markville Shopping Centre Canada Despite some successes the company faced continued struggles in the mid to late 2000s 35 In 2012 Kazuo Hirai was promoted to president and CEO replacing Stringer Shortly thereafter Hirai outlined his company wide initiative named One Sony to revive Sony from years of financial losses and bureaucratic management structure which proved difficult for former CEO Stringer to accomplish partly due to differences in business culture and native languages between Stringer and some of Sony s Japanese divisions and subsidiaries Hirai outlined three major areas of focus for Sony s electronics business which include imaging technology gaming and mobile technology as well as a focus on reducing the major losses from the television business 42 Sony Store in Nagoya Japan 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 8 billion over a decade 43 Later that month they announced that they would be closing 20 stores 44 In April the company announced that they would be selling 9 5 million shares in Square Enix roughly 8 2 percent of the game company s total shares in a deal worth approximately 48 million 45 In May 2014 the company announced it was forming two joint ventures with Shanghai Oriental Pearl Group to manufacture and market Sony s PlayStation game consoles and associated software in China 46 In 2015 Sony purchased Toshiba s image sensor business 47 It was reported in December 2016 by multiple news outlets that Sony was considering restructuring its U S operations by merging its TV amp film business Sony Pictures Entertainment with its gaming business Sony Interactive Entertainment According to the reports such a restructuring would have placed Sony Pictures under Sony Interactive s CEO Andrew House though House wouldn t have taken over day to day operations of the film studio 48 49 50 According to one report Sony was set to make a final decision on the possibility of the merger of the TV film amp gaming businesses by the end of its fiscal year in March of the following year 2017 48 In 2017 Sony sold its lithium ion battery business to Murata Manufacturing 51 52 53 In 2019 Sony merged its mobile TV and camera businesses 54 55 On 1 April 2020 Sony Electronics Corporation was established as an intermediate holding company to own and oversee its electronics and IT solutions businesses On 19 May 2020 the company announced that it would rename Sony Group Corporation as of 1 April 2021 Subsequently Sony Electronics Corporation would be renamed to Sony Corporation 56 On the same day the company announced that it would turn Sony Financial Holdings currently Sony Financial Group of which Sony already owns 65 06 of shares to a wholly owned subsidiary through a takeover bid 57 On 1 April 2021 Sony Corporation was renamed Sony Group Corporation On the same day Sony Mobile Communications Inc absorbed Sony Electronics Corporation Sony Imaging Products amp Solutions Inc and Sony Home Entertainment amp Sound Products Inc and changed its trade name to Sony Corporation 58 Formats and technologiesFurther information List of Sony trademarks 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 Digital Compact Cassette standard introduced by Philips 59 with which Sony went on to enjoy a decades long technological relationship in various areas Sony either alone or with partners has introduced several of the most popular recording formats including the 3 5 inch floppy disk compact disc and Blu ray disc 60 Video recording A rare Japanese market Betamax TV VCR combo the Model SL MV1 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 61 The company subsequently launched the Betamax format in 1975 62 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 63 In the end VHS gained critical mass in the marketbase and became the worldwide standard for consumer VCRs 63 Betamax is for all practical purposes an obsolete format Sony s professional oriented component video format called Betacam which was derived from Betamax was used until 2016 when Sony announced it was stopping production of all remaining 1 2 inch video tape recorders and players including the Digital Betacam format 64 In 1985 Sony launched their Handycam products and the Video8 format 65 Video8 and the follow on hi band Hi8 format became popular in the consumer camcorder market In 1987 Sony launched the 4 mm DAT or Digital Audio Tape as a new digital audio tape standard 66 Visual display 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 67 It was widely used in other Sony s products as well including computer monitors laptops and smartphones 68 In 2013 Sony released a new line of televisions with an improved version of the technology which incorporated quantum dots in the backlight system It was the first commercial use of quantum dots 69 70 In 2012 the company revealed a prototype of an ultrafine RGB LED display which it calls the Crystal LED Display 71 Audio recording First Sony Walkman TPS L2 from 1979 Expo in Sony Building at Ginza Chuo Ku Tokyo Sony used the Compact Cassette format in many of its tape recorders and players including the Walkman the world s first portable music player 72 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 73 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 Until late 2004 Sony s Network Walkman line of digital portable music players did not support the MP3 standard natively In 2004 Sony built upon the MiniDisc format by releasing Hi MD Hi MD allows the playback and recording of audio on newly introduced 1 GB Hi MD discs in addition to playback and recording on regular MiniDiscs In addition to saving audio on the discs Hi MD allows the storage of computer files such as documents videos and photos Audio encoding In 1993 Sony challenged the industry standard Dolby Digital 5 1 surround sound format with a newer and more advanced proprietary motion picture digital audio format called SDDS Sony Dynamic Digital Sound 74 This format employed eight channels 7 1 of audio opposed to just six used in Dolby Digital 5 1 at the time 74 Ultimately SDDS has been vastly overshadowed by the preferred DTS Digital Theatre System and Dolby Digital standards in the motion picture industry SDDS was solely developed for use in the theatre circuit Sony never intended to develop a home theatre version of SDDS 75 76 Sony and Philips jointly developed the Sony Philips digital interface format S PDIF and the high fidelity audio system SACD The latter became entrenched in a format war with DVD Audio Still neither gained a major foothold with the general public CDs had been preferred by consumers because of the ubiquitous presence of CD drives in consumer devices until the early 2000s when the iPod and streaming services became available 77 In 2015 Sony introduced LDAC a proprietary audio coding technology which allows streaming high resolution audio over Bluetooth connections at up to 990 kbit s at 32 bit 96 kHz Sony also contributed it as part of the Android Open Source Project starting from Android 8 0 Oreo enabling every OEM to integrate this standard into their own Android devices freely However the decoder library is proprietary so receiving devices require licenses On 17 September 2019 the Japan Audio Society JAS certified LDAC with their Hi Res Audio Wireless certification Currently the only codecs with the Hi Res Audio Wireless certification are LDAC and LHDC another competing standard Optical storage Front side of a Sony 200GB Blu ray disc 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 78 In 1983 the two company jointly announced the Compact Disc CD 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 It launched write once optical discs WO and magneto optical discs which were around 125MB size for the specific use of archival data storage in 1986 and 1988 respectively 79 In the early 1990s two high density optical storage standards were being developed one was the MultiMedia Compact Disc MMCD backed by Philips and Sony and the other was the Super Density Disc SD supported by Toshiba and many others Philips and Sony abandoned their MMCD format and agreed upon Toshiba s SD format with only one modification The unified disc format was called DVD and was introduced in 1997 Sony was one of the leading developers of the Blu ray optical disc format the newest standard for disc based content delivery The first Blu ray players became commercially available in 2006 The format emerged as the standard for HD media over the competing format Toshiba s HD DVD after a two year long high definition optical disc format war Sony s laser communication devices for small satellites rely on the technologies developed for the company s optical disc products 80 Disk storage In 1983 Sony introduced 90 mm micro diskettes better known as 3 5 inch 89 mm floppy disks which it had developed at a time when there were 4 floppy disks and many variations from different companies to replace the then on going 5 25 floppy disks Sony had great success and the format became dominant 3 5 floppy disks gradually became obsolete as they were replaced by current media formats Sony held more than a 70 percent share of the market when it decided to pull the plug on the format in 2010 81 82 Flash memory In 1998 Sony launched the Memory Stick format the flash memory cards for use in Sony lines of digital cameras and portable music players It has seen little support outside of Sony s own products with Secure Digital cards SD commanding considerably greater popularity Sony has made updates to the Memory Stick format with Memory Stick Duo and Memory Stick Micro The company has also released USB flash drive products branded under the Micro Vault line 83 Communication 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 NFC with Philips The standard is largely offered in two forms either chips embedded in smartphones or plastic cards with chips embedded in them Sony plans to implement this technology in train systems across Asia 84 In 2019 Sony launched the ELTRES the company s proprietary low power wide area wireless communication LPWAN standard 85 Video Gaming Until 1991 Sony had little direct involvement with the video game industry The company supplied components for other consoles such as the sound chip for the Super Famicom from Nintendo and operated a video game studio Sony Imagesoft 86 As part of a joint project between Nintendo and Sony that began as early as 1988 the two companies worked to create a CD ROM version of the Super Famicom 87 though Nintendo denied the existence of the Sony deal as late as March 1991 88 At the Consumer Electronics Show in June 1991 Sony revealed a Super Famicom with a built in CD ROM drive that incorporated Green Book technology or CD i called Play Station also known as SNES CD However a day after the announcement at CES Nintendo announced that it would be breaking its partnership with Sony opting to go with Philips instead but using the same technology 89 The deal was broken by Nintendo after they were unable to come to an agreement on how revenue would be split between the two companies 89 The breaking of the partnership infuriated Sony President Norio Ohga who responded by appointing Kutaragi with the responsibility of developing the PlayStation project to rival Nintendo 89 The sole remaining prototype of Sony s original PlayStation a Super NES with a built in CD ROM drive At that time negotiations were still on going between Nintendo and Sony with Nintendo offering Sony a non gaming role regarding their new partnership with Philips This proposal was swiftly rejected by Kutaragi who was facing increasing criticism over his work with regard to entering the video game industry from within Sony Negotiations officially ended in May 1992 and in order to decide the fate of the PlayStation project a meeting was held in June 1992 consisting of Sony President Ohga PlayStation Head Kutaragi and several senior members of Sony s board At the meeting Kutaragi unveiled a proprietary CD ROM based system he had been working on which involved playing video games with 3D graphics to the board Eventually Sony President Ohga decided to retain the project after being reminded by Kutaragi of the humiliation he suffered from Nintendo Nevertheless due to strong opposition from a majority present at the meeting as well as widespread internal opposition to the project by the older generation of Sony executives Kutaragi and his team had to be shifted from Sony s headquarters to Sony Music a completely separate financial entity owned by Sony so as to retain the project and maintain relationships with Philips for the MMCD development project which helped lead to the creation of the DVD Continued research and development In 2021 the WIPO s annual review of the World Intellectual Property Indicators report ranked Sony s as ninth in the world for the number of patent applications published under the PCT System 1 793 patent applications were published by Sony during 2020 90 This position is up from their previous ranking as 13th in 2019 with 1 566 applications 91 Business unitsFurther information List of assets owned by Sony Best known for its electronic products Sony offers a wide variety of product lines in many areas At its peak it was dubbed as a corporate octopus for its sprawling ventures from private insurance to chemicals to cosmetics to home shopping to a Tokyo based French food joint in addition its core businesses such as electronics and entertainment 39 Even after it has unwound many business units including Sony Chemicals and Vaio PC Sony still runs diverse businesses As of 2020 Sony is organized into the following business segments Game amp Network Services G amp NS Music Pictures Electronics Products amp Solutions EP amp S Imaging amp Sensing Solutions I amp SS Financial Services and Others 92 Usually each business segment has a handful of corresponding intermediate holding companies under which all the related businesses are folded into such as Columbia Records being part of Sony Music Group a subsidiary and at the same time a holding company for Sony s music businesses along with SMEJ Electronics Products amp Solutions Sony at Westfield Riccarton shopping centre in Christchurch New Zealand Sony Corporation Sony Electronics Corporation until 1 April 2021 93 is the electronics business unit of the Sony Group It primarily conducts research and development R amp D planning designing manufacturing and marketing for electronics products Sony Global Manufacturing amp Operations Corporation SGMO is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Corporation and responsible for managing manufacturing operations both in Japan and overseas through its own factories as well as third party contract manufacturers Audio In 1979 Sony released the world s first portable music player the Walkman bundled with the MDL 3L2 headphones This line fostered a fundamental change in music listening habits by allowing people to carry music with them and listen to music through lightweight headphones 72 94 Originally used to refer to portable audio cassette players the Walkman brand has been widely adopted by the company to encompass its portable digital audio and video players as well as a line of former Sony Ericsson mobile phones In the case of optical disc players the Discman brand was used until the late 1990s In 1999 Sony s first portable digital audio players were introduced one was a player using Memory Stick flash storage created by the Walkman division and the other was a smaller pen sized player with embedded flash storage created by the Vaio division both accompanied with Sony s OpenMG copyright protection technology and PC software for music transfer 95 96 Sony continue to develop Walkman digital audio players Sony is a major audio products manufacturer and one of the active noise control technology leaders 97 98 Video The logo of Bravia television Its backronym is Best Resolution Audio Visual Integrated Architecture Sony produced the TV8 301 the world s first all transistor television in 1959 99 In 1968 the company introduced the Trinitron brand name for its lines of aperture grille cathode ray tube televisions and afterwards computer monitors 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 The company discontinued the last Trinitron based television set in the US in early 2007 The end of Trinitron marked the end of Sony s analog television sets and monitors Sony used the LCD WEGA name for its LCD TVs until summer 2005 The company then introduced the BRAVIA name 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 All Sony high definition flat panel LCD televisions in North America have carried the logo for BRAVIA since 2005 In 2006 Sony lost its decades long No 1 market share in the global television market In November 2007 the Sony XEL 1 the first OLED television was released and manufactured for two years Later in 2013 Sony demonstrated the first 4K OLED television 100 101 As of 2012 Sony was the third largest maker of televisions in the world and the business unit had been unprofitable for eight consecutive years 102 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 103 In December 2011 Sony agreed to sell all stake in an LCD joint venture with Samsung Electronics S LCD for about 940 million 104 On 28 March 2012 Sony and Sharp announced that they have agreed to further amend the joint venture agreement originally executed by the parties in July 2009 as amended in April 2011 for the establishment and operation of Sharp Display Products Corporation SDP a joint venture to produce and sell large sized LCD panels and modules 105 The agreement was eventually terminated as Sony parted ways 106 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 107 In 2017 Sony launched OLED televisions under the BRAVIA brand 108 Also Sony has sold a range of tapes discs recorders and players for videocassette DVD and Blu ray formats for decades Photography and videography A Sony Cyber shot digital camera A Sony a77 DSLR camera Sony offers a wide range of digital cameras Its point and shoot models are branded Cyber shot while DSLRs and mirrorless models are branded Alpha though Sony no longer makes DSLRs It also produces action cameras and camcorders with the company s cinema grade products being sold under the CineAlta name Sony demonstrated a prototype of the Sony Mavica in 1981 and released it for the consumer market in 1988 The first Cyber shot was introduced in 1996 Sony s market share of the digital camera market fell from a high of 20 to 9 by 2005 109 40 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 They also started a new lens mount system which was the E mount There were quite a few NEX models out there when Sony decided to melt the NEX series into the Alpha series The first Alpha MILC was the a3000 which was introduced in August 2013 It was followed by the Full Frame a7 and a7R in October then the successors of the NEX 5 the NEX 6 and NEX 7 the a5000 and the a6000 in 2014 The a6000 became the most popular MILC ever and Sony became the largest MILC manufacturer Computing Notebook Sony Vaio Sony has axed its loss making PC business in 2014 Sony produced computers MSX home computers and NEWS workstations during the 1980s The company withdrew from the computer business around 1990 Sony entered again into the global computer market under the new VAIO brand began in 1996 Short for Video Audio Integrated Operation the line was the first computer brand to highlight visual audio features 40 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 110 111 112 In a bid to join the tablet computer market the company launched its Sony Tablet line of Android tablets in 2011 Since 2012 Sony s Android products have been marketed under the Xperia brand used for its smartphones 113 On 4 February 2014 Sony announced that it would sell its VAIO PC business due to poor sales 114 and Japanese company Japan Industrial Partners JIP will purchase the VAIO brand with the deal finalized by the end of March 2014 115 As of 2018 Sony maintained a 5 stake in the new independent company Healthcare and biotechnology Sony has targeted medical healthcare and biotechnology business as a growth sector in the future The company acquired iCyt Mission Technology Inc renamed Sony Biotechnology Inc in 2012 a manufacturer of flow cytometers in 2010 and Micronics Inc a developer of microfluidics based diagnostic tools in 2011 In 2012 Sony announced that it would acquire all shares of So net Entertainment Corporation the largest shareholder of M3 Inc an operator of portal sites m3 com MR kun MDLinx and MEDI GATE for healthcare professionals 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 or higher and 3D capability 116 Sony Olympus Medical Solutions Inc Sony 51 Olympus 49 was established on 16 April 2013 117 On 28 February 2014 Sony M3 and Illumina established a joint venture called P5 Inc to provide a genome analysis service for research institutions and enterprises in Japan 118 Mobility Xperia the product device name for a range of smartphones from Sony A historical Sony CMD CD5 mobile phone Sony Xperia Z introduced and released in 2013 The first smartphone with a Full HD display 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 119 Initial sales were rocky and the company posted losses in 2001 and 2002 However Sony Ericsson reached a profit in 2003 The company distinguished itself with multimedia capable mobile phones which included features such as cameras These were unusual at the time Despite their innovations Sony Ericsson faced intense competition from Apple s iPhone which was released in 2007 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 after Nokia Samsung and LG 120 By 2010 its market share had fallen to sixth place 121 Sony acquired Ericsson s share of the venture in 2012 for over US 1 billion 119 Sony Mobile focuses exclusively on the smartphone market under the Xperia brand In 2013 Sony contributed to around two percent of the mobile phone market with 37 million mobile phones sold 122 Sony Mobile s sales reached a peak in 2014 with 40 million handsets the volume has since decreased Sony shipped 13 5 million phones in 2017 6 5 million in 2018 and 2 9 million handsets in FY 2020 123 Robotics 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 Despite being a pioneer in the field Sony had ceased robotics related operations for 10 years due to financial difficulties until it decided to revive them in 2016 124 In 2015 Sony partnered with an autonomous driving startup ZMP INC to establish an aerial surveillance and reconnaissance drone manufacturer named Aerosense 125 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 126 Imaging amp Sensing Solutions Sony traces its roots in the semiconductor business back to 1954 when it became the first Japanese company to commercialize the transistor invented and licensed by Bell Labs whilst some of the biggest and well established names in Japan at the time like Toshiba and Mitsubishi Electric initially stuck with vacuum tubes they had been thriving on despite being an expert on the vacuum tube himself Ibuka saw potential of the novel technology and had Morita negotiate the terms for licensing making Sony into one of the earliest and the youngest licensees of the transistor together with Texas Instruments 127 128 129 In 1957 Sony employee Leo Esaki and his colleagues invented a tunnel diode usually referred to as Esaki diode by which they discovered the quantum tunneling effect in solids for which Esaki received the Nobel prize in Physics in 1973 130 Sony has commanded a dominant share in the charge coupled device market 131 As of 2020 Sony is the world s largest manufacturer of CMOS image sensors as its chips are widely used in digital cameras tablet computers smartphones drones and more recently self driving systems in automobiles 132 As of 2020 the company through its chip business arm Sony Semiconductor Solutions designs manufactures and sells a wide range of semiconductors and electronic components including image sensors HAD CCD Exmor image processors BIONZ laser diodes system LSIs mixed signal LSIs emerging memory storage emerging displays microLED microOLED and holographic display multi functional microcomputer SPRESENSE etc 133 In 2020 Sony has launched the first intelligent vision sensors with AI edge computing capabilies 134 Game amp Network Services Main article Sony Interactive Entertainment Sony Interactive Entertainment headquarters in San Mateo California Sony Interactive Entertainment formerly Sony Computer Entertainment is best known for producing the popular line of PlayStation consoles The line grew out of a failed partnership with Nintendo Originally Nintendo requested Sony to develop an add on for its Super Nintendo Entertainment System that would play CD ROMs In 1991 Sony announced the add on as well as a dedicated console known as the Play Station However a disagreement over software licensing for the console caused the partnership to fall through Sony then continued the project independently Launched in 1994 the first PlayStation gained 61 of global console sales and broke Nintendo s long standing lead in the market 135 Sony followed up with the PlayStation 2 in 2000 which was even more successful The console has become the most successful of all time selling over 150 million units as of 2011 update Sony released the PlayStation 3 a high definition console in 2006 It was the first console to use the Blu ray format and was considerably more expensive than the competitors Xbox 360 and Wii due to the Cell processor 40 Early on poor sales performance resulted in significant losses for the company pushing it to sell the console at a loss 136 The PlayStation 3 sold generally more poorly than its competitors in the early years of its release but managed to overtake the Xbox 360 in global sales later on 137 It later introduced the PlayStation Move an accessory that allows players to control video games using motion gestures The PlayStation 2 is the best selling video game console of all time Sony extended the brand to the portable games market in 2004 with the PlayStation Portable PSP The console has sold reasonably but has taken a second place to a rival handheld the Nintendo DS Sony developed the Universal Media Disc UMD optical disc medium for use on the PlayStation Portable Early on the format was used for movies but it has since lost major studio support Sony released a disc less version of its PlayStation Portable the PSP Go in 2009 The company 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 6 million units globally 138 On 18 March 2014 at GDC president of SCE Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida announced their new virtual reality technology dubbed Project Morpheus and later named PlayStation VR for PlayStation 4 The headset brought VR gaming and non gaming software to the company s console According to a report released by Houston based patent consulting firm LexInnova in May 2015 Sony is leading the virtual reality patent race According to the firm s analysis of nearly 12 000 patents or patent applications Sony has 366 virtual reality patents or patent applications 139 PlayStation VR was released worldwide on 13 October 2016 140 On 31 March 2019 the successor to the PlayStation 4 was announced and on 12 November 2020 the PlayStation 5 was released in North America Australia New Zealand Japan South Korea and Singapore The console was launched in Indonesia on 22 January 2021 Upon completion of the fiscal quarter Sony sold 4 5 million PlayStation 5 consoles keeping pace with the best selling console of all time the PlayStation 2 141 Pictures and Music Further information Sony Entertainment Sony Entertainment has two divisions Sony Pictures Entertainment Sony Music Group Sony Music Entertainment Sony Music Publishing Sony USA previously owned and operated Sony Trans Com a technology business that provided in flight entertainment programming as well as video and audio playback equipment for the airline industry Sony had purchased the business from Sundstrand Corp in 1989 and subsequently sold it to Rockwell Collins in 2000 142 143 In 2012 Sony rolled most of its consumer content services including video music and gaming into the Sony Entertainment Network the predecessor of PlayStation Network Sony Pictures Entertainment Main articles Sony Pictures Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan and Sony Pictures Networks India Sony Pictures Plaza next to the main studio lot of Sony Pictures in Culver City California Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc SPE is the television and film production distribution unit of Sony With 12 5 box office market share in 2011 the company was ranked third among movie studios 144 Its group sales in 2010 were US 7 2 billion 145 146 The company has produced many notable movie franchises including Spider Man The Karate Kid and Men in Black It has also produced the popular television game shows Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune Sony entered the television and film production market when it acquired Columbia Pictures Entertainment in 1989 for 3 4 billion Columbia lives on in the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group a division of SPE which in turn owns Columbia Pictures and TriStar Pictures among other film production and distribution companies such as Screen Gems Sony Pictures Classics Sony Pictures Home Entertainment SPE s television division is known as Sony Pictures Television The main entrance to the Sony Pictures Entertainment studio lot in Culver City For the first several years of its existence Sony Pictures Entertainment performed poorly leading many to suspect the company would sell off the division 147 In 2006 Sony started using ARccOS Protection on some of their film DVDs but later issued a recall 148 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 149 Sony Music Group and SMEJ Main articles Sony Music Sony Music Publishing and Sony Music Entertainment Japan Sony Music Entertainment headquarters in New York City United States Sony Music Entertainment also known as SME or Sony Music is the largest global recorded music company of the big three record companies and is controlled by Sony Corporation of America the United States subsidiary of Sony In one of its largest ever acquisitions Sony purchased CBS Record Group in 1988 for US 2 billion 150 In the process Sony partnered and gained the rights to the ATV catalogue of Michael Jackson considered by the Guinness Book of World Records to be the most successful entertainer of all time The acquisition of CBS Records provided the foundation for the formation of Sony Music Entertainment which Sony established in 1991 In 1968 Sony and CBS Records had formed a 50 50 joint venture CBS Sony Records later renamed CBS Sony Group in Japan When CBS Records was acquired a 50 stake in CBS Sony Group owned by CBS was also transferred to Sony In March 1988 four wholly owned subsidiaries were folded into CBS Sony Group and the company was renamed as Sony Music Entertainment Japan SMEJ It operates independently of Sony Music as it is directly owned by Japanese Sony In 2004 Sony entered into a joint venture with Bertelsmann AG merging Sony Music Entertainment with Bertelsmann Music Group to create Sony BMG 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 151 In 2007 the company acquired Famous Music for US 370 million gaining the rights to the catalogues of Eminem and Akon among others Sony bought out Bertelsmann s share in Sony BMG and formed a new Sony Music Entertainment in 2008 Since then the company has undergone management changes Sony purchased digital music recognition company Gracenote for US 260 million in 2008 152 Tribune Media Company acquired Gracenote from Sony in 2014 for 170 million 153 Besides its record label Sony operates other music businesses In 1995 Sony merged its publisher with Michael Jackson s ATV Music Publishing forming Sony ATV Music Publishing At the time the publishing company was the second largest of its kind in the world The company owns the publishing rights to over 4 million compositions including The Beatles Lennon McCartney catalogue Bob Dylan Eminem Lady Gaga Sam Smith Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift In 2012 Sony ATV acquired a majority stake in EMI Music Publishing becoming the world s largest music publishing company In 2018 Sony bought the rest of the shares in the publisher making it a wholly owned subsidiary 154 155 Since 2016 Sony owns all of Sony ATV 156 Anime Main articles Aniplex and Crunchyroll Sony s entering into the Japanese animation or anime business happened in 1995 when its Sony Music Entertainment Japan SMEJ division established Aniplex as its subsidiary managing creative productions which founded A 1 Pictures the first anime studio of Sony ten years later Since then through group wide and international ventures 157 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 158 The anime business operations of Sony are scattered around the group mainly in its Pictures and Music units as follows SMEJ s notable related businesses include Aniplex and its subsidiaries CloverWorks and A 1 Pictures while Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan SPEJ operates anime oriented TV channels like Animax Kids Station Aniplex and U S headquartered Sony Pictures co own U S based anime distribution company Crunchyroll which since 2022 has become the successor company to Funimation which it acquired in 2017 and included subsidiaries such as Wakanim absorbing into Crunchyroll itself and Madman Anime to be rebranded as Crunchyroll Pty Ltd 159 In December 2020 Funimation announced that it would buy AT amp T s animation business Crunchyroll for 1 175 billion which would help the company to compete more globally with entertainment giants such as Netflix 160 This acquisition was completed in August 2021 161 Financial Services Main article Sony Financial Group Headquarters of Sony Financial Group in Tokyo Japan Sony Financial Group is a holding company for Sony s financial services business which includes Sony Life in Japan and the Philippines Sony Assurance Sony Bank etc The unit proved to be the most profitable of Sony s businesses in FY 2005 earning 1 7 billion in profit 39 Sony Financial s low fees have aided the unit s popularity while threatening Sony s premium brand name 39 Others Electric vehicles and batteries Further information Sony Energy Devices Corporation and Sony Honda Mobility A company behind the commercialization of lithium ion battery 162 Sony had been exploring the possibility to manufacture the batteries for electric vehicles 163 164 165 In 2014 Sony participated within NRG Energy eVgo Ready for Electric Vehicle REV program for EV charging parking lots 166 However the company then decided to sell its lithium ion battery business to Murata Manufacturing in 2016 167 In 2015 Sony invested 842 thousand in ZMP INC drawing speculations that it is contemplating developing self driving cars 168 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 169 At the occasion Sony also stated its goal of developing technology for the automotive sector especially concerning autonomous driving sensors and in car entertainment 170 In 2022 Sony Group and Honda launched a joint venture for their electric vehicle partnership Sony Honda Mobility SHM which would deliver its first electric vehicles by 2026 and sell them online starting in the United States and Japan 171 172 The joint venture announced their new Afeela brand and its first prototype model at the CES 2023 173 Corporate informationInstitutional ownership Sony is a kabushiki gaisha registered to the Tokyo Stock Exchange in Japan and the New York Stock Exchange for overseas trading As of 31 March 2020 update the largest shareholders of Sony are as follows 174 Citibank as depositary bank for American depositary receipt holders 9 4 The Master Trust Bank of Japan nominated investment trusts main account 8 2 Japan Trustee Services Bank nominated investment trusts Main trust account 6 1 Trust account 7 2 4 Trust account 5 2 1 JPMorgan Chase Bank 385632 3 2 Finances As of July 2020 Sony one of the largest Japanese companies by market capitalization and operating profit was valued at over 90 billion At the same period it was also recognized as the most cash rich Japanese company with its net cash reserves of 1 8 trillion 175 The company was immensely profitable throughout the 1990s and early 2000s in part because of the success of its new PlayStation line The company 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 The company faced three consecutive years of losses leading up to 2011 176 While noting the negative effects of intervening circumstances such as natural disasters and fluctuating currency exchange rates the Financial Times criticized the company for its lack of resilience and inability to gauge the economy voicing skepticism about Sony s revitalization efforts given a lack of tangible results 176 In September 2000 Sony had a market capitalization of 100 billion but by December 2011 it had plunged to 18 billion reflecting falling prospects for Sony but also reflecting grossly inflated share prices of the dot com bubble years 177 Net worth as measured by stockholder equity has steadily grown from 17 9 billion in March 2002 to 35 6 billion through December 2011 178 Earnings yield inverse of the price to earnings ratio has never been more than 5 and usually much less thus Sony has always traded in over priced ranges with the exception of the 2009 market bottom On 9 December 2008 Sony announced that it would be cutting 8 000 jobs dropping 8 000 contractors and reducing its global manufacturing sites by 10 to save 1 1 billion per year 179 In April 2012 Sony announced that it would reduce its workforce by 10 000 6 of its employee base as part of CEO Kaz Hirai s effort to get the company back into the black This came after a loss of 520 billion yen roughly US 6 36 billion for fiscal 2012 the worst since the company was founded Accumulation loss for the past four years was 919 32 billion yen 180 181 Sony planned to increase its marketing expenses by 30 in 2012 182 1 000 of the jobs cut come from the company s mobile phone unit s workforce 700 jobs will be cut in the 2012 2013 fiscal year and the remaining 300 in the following fiscal year 183 Sony had revenues of 6 493 trillion in 2012 and maintained large reserves of cash with 895 billion on hand as of 2012 In May 2012 Sony s market capitalization was valued at about 15 billion 184 Sony s 2009 sales and distribution by geographical region 185 Geographic region Total sales in millions of Japan 1 873 219United States 2 512 345Europe 2 307 658Other areas 2 041 270In January 2013 Sony announced it was selling its US headquarters building for 1 1 billion to a consortium led by real estate developer The Chetrit Group 186 On 28 January 2014 Moody s Investors Services dropped Sony s credit rating to Ba1 judged to have speculative elements and a significant credit risk saying that the company s profitability is likely to remain weak and volatile 187 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 188 In 2014 189 Sony South Africa closed its TV Hi Fi and camera divisions 190 with the purpose of reconsidering its local distribution model and in 2017 it returned 191 192 facilitated by Premium Brand Distributors Pty Ltd Sony s Revenue by different market segments 193 Segment Revenue Financial Year 2017 in millions of Financial Year 2018 in millions of Change Percentage of Sales Percentage Change FY 2017 to FY 2018 Game amp Network Services 1 943 812 2 310 872 367 060 22 8 18 9Music 799 995 807 489 7 494 9 4 0 9Pictures 1 011 067 986 873 24 194 11 8 2 4Home Entertainment amp Sound 1 222 733 1 155 411 67 322 14 3 5 5Imaging Products and Solutions 655 892 670 450 14 558 7 7 2 2Mobile Communications 723 742 498 000 225 742 8 5 31 2Semiconductors 726 892 770 622 43 730 8 5 6 0Financial Services 1 228 377 1 282 539 54 162 14 4 4 4All Other 407 174 345 737 61 437 1 3 31 0Total 8 719 684 8 827 993 108 309In November 2018 Sony posted its earning report for the second quarter showing it has lost about US 480 million in the mobile phone division 194 prompting another round of downsizing in the unit including the closure of a manufacturing plant and halving of its workforce 195 196 Environmental record In November 2011 Sony was ranked ninth jointly with Panasonic in Greenpeace s Guide to Greener Electronics 197 This chart grades major electronics companies on their environmental work The company scored 3 6 10 incurring a penalty point for comments it has made in opposition to energy efficiency standards in California It also risks a further penalty point in future editions for being a member of trade associations that have commented against energy efficiency standards 198 Together with Philips Sony receives the highest score for energy policy advocacy after calling on the EU to adopt an unconditional 30 reduction target for greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 Meanwhile it receives full marks for the efficiency of its products 198 In June 2007 Sony ranked 14th on the Greenpeace guide 199 Sony fell from its earlier 11th place ranking due to Greenpeace s claims that Sony had double standards in their waste policies 200 As of May 2018 update Greenpeace s 2017 Guide to Greener Electronics rated Sony approximately in the middle among electronics manufacturers with a grade of D 201 Since 1976 Sony has had an Environmental Conference 202 Sony s policies address their effects on global warming the environment and resources They are taking steps to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that they put out as well as regulating the products they get from their suppliers in a process that they call green procurement 203 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 Recycling drop off points around the U S The company has also developed a biobattery that runs on sugars and carbohydrates that works similarly to the way living creatures work This is the most powerful small biobattery to date 204 In 2000 Sony faced criticism for a document entitled NGO Strategy that was leaked to the press The document involved the company s surveillance of environmental activists in an attempt to plan how to counter their movements It specifically mentioned environmental groups that were trying to pass laws that held electronics producing companies responsible for the cleanup of the toxic chemicals contained in their merchandise 205 Cartel In 2007 an investigation launched in 2002 by the European Commission culminated in Sony Fuji and Maxell receiving a total of 110 million US dollar fine for fixing professional videotape prices between the years 1999 and 2002 through regular meetings and other illegal contracts at the time the three corporations shared a combined 85 control of the market Sony s part of the fine was raised by a third for trying to obstruct the investigation by refusing to answer inquiries made by the EU officials and shredding of evidence during the multiple law enforcement raids 206 207 During the year 2001 prior to the investigation Sony sold professional videotapes for a total of 115 million euros inside the EU Community engagement EYE SEE projectSony Corporation is actively involved in the EYE SEE project conducted by UNICEF EYE SEE digital photography workshops have been run for children in Argentina Tunisia Mali South Africa Ethiopia Madagascar Rwanda Liberia and Pakistan 208 209 South Africa Mobile Library ProjectSony assists The South Africa Primary Education Support Initiative SAPESI through financial donations and children book donations to the South Africa Mobile Library Project 210 The Sony Canada Charitable FoundationThe Sony Canada Charitable Foundation SCCF is a non profit organization which supports three key charities the Make A Wish Canada the United Way of Canada and the EarthDay and ECOKIDS program Sony Foundation and You CanAfter the 2011 Queensland floods and Victorian bushfires Sony Music released benefit albums with money raised going to the Sony Foundation 211 You Can is the youth cancer program of Sony Foundation 212 Open Planet Ideas Crowdsourcing ProjectSony launched its Open Planet Ideas Crowdsourcing Project in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund and the design group IDEO 213 Street Football Stadium ProjectOn the occasion of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil Sony partnered with streetfootballworld and launched the Street Football Stadium Project to support football based educational programmes in local communities across Latin America and Brazil 214 More than 25 Street Stadiums were developed since the project s inception 215 The Sony Global Relief Fund for COVID 19During the COVID 19 pandemic Sony launched a relief fund in line with other media and tech companies to aid individuals working in the medical education and entertainment sectors 216 See also Japan portal Companies portal Electronics portal Film portal Music portal Video games portalList of acquisitions by Sony List of assets owned by Sony List of libraries owned by Sony List of companies of JapanNotes Since April 2021 the Sony Corporation legal name is used for Sony Group s electronics business that was previously known as Sony Electronics Corporation References Change of the Sony entity for License Agreements etc www sony net Sony Group Corporation 2021 04 01 Retrieved 2021 05 07 Sony Corporate History www sony com Retrieved 2021 04 03 Sony Fortune Organization Data Corporate Info Sony Corporation 2019 08 01 Retrieved 2020 06 05 Financial Statements and Consolidated Financial Results PDF sony com SONY Corporation Archived PDF from the original on 2021 05 04 Retrieved 2021 06 27 Corporate Data PDF Sony Corporation 2019 03 31 Archived PDF from the original on 2019 07 28 Retrieved 2019 04 03 Access amp Map Sony Global Retrieved 2 April 2021 1 7 1 Konan Minato ku Tokyo 108 0075 Japan Map Address in Japanese 108 0075 東京都港区港南1 7 1 Aswad Jem 2019 07 17 Sony Unites Recorded Music and Publishing Under One Company Variety Retrieved 2021 05 21 Sony embraces its inner conglomerate Reuters 2020 05 02 Retrieved 2020 07 03 Sony in US 2 3 billion deal becomes the world s biggest music publisher the third largest movie studio Archived from the original on 2021 01 15 Retrieved 2018 05 29 a b Sony s key image sensor business hit by smartphone market decline Nikkei Asian Review Top 20 semiconductor sales leaders for Q1 2016 www electronicspecifier com Retrieved 2020 06 01 2019 Market Share Data Shows Canon and Sony Growing Nikon Shrinking PetaPixel petapixel com 2020 08 14 Retrieved 2021 05 21 Global LCD TV manufacturer market share from 2008 to 2017 Statista Retrieved 2017 02 26 Samsung tops global TV market for 15th consecutive year FlatpanelsHD Retrieved 2021 05 21 Alekseenko Artem 2021 03 04 LG and Sony Led OLED TV Gains in Advanced TV Market in Q4 DisplayDaily Retrieved 2021 05 21 How Samsung fell behind Sony and LG in the premium TV market Reuters 2018 05 02 Retrieved 2020 06 01 Sony Group Portal Motion Logo www sony com Sony like no other Global Brand Development Blind Archived from the original on 2016 11 17 Retrieved 2016 11 16 Christopher MacManus 2009 09 02 Sony Insider 2010 10 27 Retrieved 2016 08 07 Sonyinsider com Archived from the original on 2018 06 16 Retrieved 2017 04 21 Morck R K Nakamura M 2005 A Frog in a Well Knows Nothing of the Ocean A History of Corporate Ownership in Japan PDF In Morck Randall K ed A History of Corporate Governance around the World Family Business Groups to Professional Managers University of Chicago Press pp 367 466 ISBN 0 226 53680 7 Archived PDF from the original on 2016 05 09 Sony 2020 Global 500 Fortune Fortune Sundberg Stephen 2016 09 18 Shirokiya Department Store c 1910 1940 Old Tokyo Old Tokyo Archived from the original on 2012 09 18 Retrieved 2020 11 05 Sony Global History www sony net Retrieved 2017 07 07 a b c d e Nobuo Abiko 1966 03 26 Pioneering firm upsets Japan hiring Pattern broken The Christian Science Monitor p 14 via ProQuest a b c d Sony Global Sony History Retrieved 2007 02 16 Neate Rupert 2014 12 01 A history of Sony s successes and failures The Guardian ISSN 0261 3077 Retrieved 2019 04 22 Chang Sea Jin 2011 02 25 Sony vs Samsung The Inside Story of the Electronics Giants Battle For Global Supremacy John Wiley amp Sons ISBN 9780470830444 Grayson Robert 2012 09 01 Sony The Company and Its Founders The Company and Its Founders ABDO Publishing Company ISBN 9781614801832 via Google Books Made in Japan Akio Morita and Sony pg 76 by Akio Morita with muzik indir muzik indir Archived 17 January 2021 at the Wayback Machine Edwin M Rheingold and Mitsuko Shimomura Signet Books 1986 a b Sony Corporate History Japanese Sony co jp Retrieved 7 July 2011 Nathan John 1999 Sony the private life Boston Mass Houghton Mifflin p 52 ISBN 0618126945 Sony co uk About Sony The History of the Sony Corporation Archived 28 November 2013 at the Wayback Machine Sony co uk Retrieved 7 July 2011 Focusing on the design of pocket transistor radios manufactured during the 1950s amp 1960s Focusing on the design of pocket transistor radios manufactured during the 1950s amp 1960s Retrieved 2020 01 16 a b c d e f Christian Caryl and With Hideko Takayama and Kay Itoi in Tokyo George Wehrfritz in Hong Kong John Sparks and Michael Hastings in New York Sony is Not Japan the Appointment of a Foreign CEO is a Sign of how Far the Iconic Company has Fallen in the Japanese Corporate Elite Newsweek 21 March 2005 30 ProQuest Research Library Web 26 May 2012 Immerwahr Daniel 2019 How to hide an empire a history of the greater United States Straus and Giroux Farrar First ed New York ISBN 978 0 374 71512 0 OCLC 1086608761 Deming s beatification spoke to the centrality of the U S military in Japan s economic growth The more that military fought the more Japanese firms profited The Korean War had been a godsend The Vietnam War helped too The men who fought it drank Kirin beer carried Nikon cameras rode Honda motorbikes and dropped bombs with Sony parts a b c d Lohr Steve Hard Hit Sony Girds for a Fight in the American Electronics Market New York Times A 8 New York Times 14 August 1983 Web 26 May 2012 a b Digication e Portfolio Navaldeep Singh Investigate and Analyze the company s History and Growth stonybrook digication com Retrieved 2017 06 04 a b c d e f g h Fackler Martin Cutting Sony a Corporate Octopus Back to a Rational Size New York Times C 1 New York Times 29 May 2006 Web 27 May 2012 a b c d Nakamoto Michiyo Screen Test Stringers Strategy Will Signal to what Extent Sony can Stay in the Game CONSUMER ELECTRONICS The Japanese Company that Once Brought the World Market Defining Products is being Trounced by More Agile Competitors and must Decide which Activities no Longer Form Part of its Future Writes Michiyo Nakamoto Financial Times 17 ABI INFORM Global 21 September 2005 Web 27 May 2012 Osati Sohrab 2017 06 04 Sony Rebrands Retail Stores Kills off Sony Style and Launches a New Store Initiative Medium Jeff Blagdon 2012 03 27 Sony reorganizes into One Sony prioritizes digital imaging gaming and mobile The Verge Retrieved 2013 07 10 Knight Sophie Reiji Murai 2014 02 06 As losses mount Sony s Hirai seeks cure for TV business in spinoff Reuters Tokyo Retrieved 2014 02 11 Sony to shutter two thirds of its US stores Engadget 2014 02 26 Retrieved 2014 02 27 Makuch Eddie 2014 04 16 PS4 company Sony to sell its entire stake in Square Enix valued at around 47 million GameSpot Retrieved 2014 04 16 Sony Shanghai Oriental Pearl to set up China PlayStation JVs Reuters 2014 05 25 Toshiba sells sensor business to Sony overhauls chip unit CNBC 2015 10 28 a b Aldrich Rachel 2016 12 12 Why would Sony merge its gaming and film units TheStreet Atkinson Claire 2016 12 12 Sony considers merging gaming and film divisions New York Post Cooke Chris Revamp of Sony s entertainment business could more closely align Sony Music with Sony ATV Complete Music Update Murata to pour 450m into Sony battery ops after purchase Nikkei Asian Review Murata Manufacturing and Sony Sign Definitive Agreement for the Transfer of Battery Business Murata Manufacturing Co Ltd corporate murata com Sony to complete sale of battery business to Murata in September 2017 07 19 via Japan Times Online Update Mass job cuts expected Sony to merge all consumer electronics divisions after mobile loses nearly a billion dollars in a year 2019 03 29 Whitwam Ryan 2019 03 28 Sony Merges Electronics Divisions Hiding Staggering Mobile Losses ExtremeTech Extremetech Announcement of New Sony Group Organizational Structure Press release Sony Corporation 2020 05 01 Retrieved 2020 05 19 Announcement Regarding Commencement of Tender Offer for Shares Etc of Sony Financial Holdings Inc Securities Code 8729 PDF Press release Sony Corporation 2020 05 01 Archived PDF from the original on 2020 08 07 Retrieved 2020 05 21 Announcement of Decision Regarding Company Split Small scale Company Split of Electronics Products amp Solutions Business PDF Press release Sony Corporation 2020 11 17 Archived PDF from the original on 2021 07 13 Retrieved 2021 07 13 Lou Ottens obituary The Guardian 2021 03 17 Retrieved 2021 09 07 Ma arif Nelly Nailaite 2008 15 The Power of Marketing Penerbit Salemba U matic 1971 1990s Museum of Obsolete Media 2018 01 20 Retrieved 2020 08 05 Curtis Sophie 2015 11 10 Sony is finally killing off Betamax video tapes Daily Telegraph ISSN 0307 1235 Archived from the original on 2022 01 10 Retrieved 2019 01 04 a b The History of Format Wars and How Sony Finally Won For Now pastemagazine com 2016 07 29 Retrieved 2019 01 04 Digital Betacam 1993 2016 Museum of Obsolete Media 2014 05 28 Retrieved 2019 01 07 Video8 1985 2000s Museum of Obsolete Media 2014 05 27 Retrieved 2019 01 04 What s DAT Sound Bitstreams The Digital Collections Blog 2014 10 10 Retrieved 2019 01 04 Sony introduces first televisions to feature LED backlights www ledsmagazine com Retrieved 2020 08 06 The Xperia Z Ultra s Triluminos and X Reality Engine technologies explained Android Authority 2013 06 25 Retrieved 2020 08 06 Quantum Dots Get Commercial Debut in More Colorful Sony TVs MIT Technology Review Retrieved 2020 08 03 Blagdon Jeff 2013 01 16 Sony s new Triluminos TVs pursue vibrant hues with quantum dots The Verge Retrieved 2020 08 06 Sony fights the OLED future with new Crystal LED prototype Update Hands on Engadget Retrieved 2020 08 06 a b Haire Meaghan 2009 07 01 The Walkman Time ISSN 0040 781X Retrieved 2019 01 17 MiniDisc 1992 2013 Museum of Obsolete Media 2013 11 16 Retrieved 2019 01 17 a b Sony Digital Dynamic Sound www cs cmu edu Retrieved 2019 02 01 Nailatie Ma arif Nelly 2008 The power of marketing practitioner perspectives in Asia Penerbit Salemba Empat ISBN 9789796914456 OCLC 968144111 Why isn t SDDS in the consumer market Blu ray Movie Discussion Expert Reviews amp News Retrieved 2019 02 01 Waniata Ryan 2018 02 07 The Life and Times of the Late Great CD digitaltrends com Retrieved 2019 02 01 The history of the CD The beginning Research Philips Retrieved 2020 08 03 A Sony to launch space business Nikkei Asian Review Retrieved 2018 04 21 Ma arif Nelly Nailatie 2008 Power of Marketing Penerbit Salemba ISBN 9789796914456 Floppy disk history The evolution of personal computing Sony MICRO VAULT enabling portable bragability for Gran Turismo 4 gamers GamesIndustry biz 2005 03 03 Alpeyev Pavel Huang Grace 2015 10 15 Sony s Answer to Apple Pay Is Laying Tracks for Asian Expansion Bloomberg Business Retrieved 2015 10 19 Sony unveils LPWA IoT communication module eeNews Automotive 2019 05 30 Retrieved 2020 08 03 DeMaria Rusel Wilson Johnny L 2003 High Score The Illustrated History of Electronic Games 2 ed New York McGraw Hill Osborne p 376 ISBN 0 07 223172 6 Game Over by David Scheff Celebrating Software Computer Gaming World June 1991 p 64 Archived from the original on 2013 12 03 Retrieved 2013 11 17 a b c The Making Of PlayStation Edge Online Edge Magazine 2009 04 24 Archived from the original on 2014 02 06 Retrieved 2014 02 02 World Intellectual Property Indicators 2021 PDF WIPO Archived PDF from the original on 2021 11 08 Retrieved 2021 11 30 World Intellectual Property Organization 2020 World Intellectual Property Indicators 2020 www wipo int World IP Indicators WIPI World Intellectual Property Organization WIPO doi 10 34667 tind 42184 ISBN 9789280532012 Retrieved 2021 08 26 Sony Global Organization Data www sony net Retrieved 2020 07 03 Officially Sony Mobile Communications Inc absorbed Sony Electronics Corporation Sony Imaging Products amp Solutions Inc and Sony Home Entertainment amp Sound Products Inc and changed its trade name to Sony Corporation Wells Georgia 2016 09 07 The History of Headphones The Wall Street Journal ISSN 0099 9660 Retrieved 2020 08 04 CNN MP3 for Christmas Maybe November 24 1999 CNN Microsoft and Sony Enable High Quality Music Files To Be Downloaded on PCs and Portable Devices 1999 11 15 Wray Adam 2020 01 30 Apple Bose What your headphones say about you Financial Times Archived from the original on 2022 12 10 Retrieved 2020 08 05 Five of the best noise cancelling headphones The Guardian 2019 03 16 Retrieved 2020 08 05 TV8 301 Portable Television 1959 Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum Retrieved 2020 08 03 Sony brings OLED TV to U S Reuters 2008 01 07 Retrieved 2020 08 03 Sony announces the world s first 4K OLED TV at CES 3 840 x 2 160 resolution no price or release in sight Engadget Retrieved 2020 08 06 Yang Jun Yasu Mariko 2012 05 23 Sony Samsung Ask U S Retailers to Curb Discounts on TV Sets Bloomberg News Sony to restructure TV business in talks with LG to supply OLED panels OLED Info www oled info com Retrieved 2020 08 03 Sony sells 940m LCD stake to Samsung to slash TV losses Retrieved 2011 12 27 Sony and Sharp in LCD panel joint venture Sony net Retrieved 2014 05 12 Welch Chris 2012 05 02 Sony and Sharp officially terminate LCD partnership The Verge Retrieved 2020 07 12 Budget brand TCL teams with Sony Panasonic venture for large TVs Nikkei Asian Review Retrieved 2020 08 03 Sony 2017 TV line up full overview with prices FlatpanelsHD Retrieved 2020 08 03 Sony Global Product amp Technology Milestones Digital Camera www sony net Retrieved 2020 08 03 Dell Details on Notebook Battery Recall Direct2Dell 2006 08 14 Archived from the original on 2006 08 20 Retrieved 2006 08 21 Dell announces recall of 4 1 million laptop batteries CBC News 2006 08 14 Retrieved 2006 09 28 Sony Dell battery issue heats up CBC News 2006 08 24 Retrieved 2006 08 24 Tablet amp Smartphones Xperia Tablet amp Smartphones Sony 2009 07 30 Retrieved 2013 07 10 Smith Mat 2014 02 06 Sony sells its VAIO PC business makes TV arm its own subsidiary Engadget Retrieved 2014 02 06 Catherine Shu 2014 02 06 Sony To Exit PC Business By Selling VAIO TechCrunch AOL Inc Retrieved 2014 02 07 Announcement of Agreements Between Olympus and Sony to Form Business and Capital Alliance PDF Olympus global com Retrieved 2014 05 12 Establishment of Sony Olympus Medical Solutions Inc Press release Sony Olympus Medical Solutions 2013 04 16 Retrieved 2013 04 19 Establishment of a New Company to start genome information platform business Press release Sony Corporation 2014 01 23 Retrieved 2014 05 16 a b Sony and Ericsson complete joint venture agreement Press release Sony 2001 08 28 Retrieved 2012 05 26 nonmember Telecoms Korea Retrieved on 11 July 2011 Gartner Says Worldwide Mobile Device Sales to End Users Reached 1 6 billion Units in 2010 Smartphone Sales Grew 72 Percent in 2010 Apple and RIM Displaced Sony Ericsson and Motorola in Mobile Device Manufacturers Ranking gartner com 2011 02 09 Archived from the original on 2011 02 09 Topic Sony www statista com Retrieved 2016 03 23 Form 20 F FY2020 PDF Investor Relations Tokyo Sony Group Corporation p 37 Archived PDF from the original on 2021 06 25 Retrieved 2021 11 04 UPDATE 2 Sony upbeat on games and robots but cuts outlook for image sensors Reuters in German 2016 06 29 Retrieved 2020 08 03 dead link Gibbs Samuel Sony is launching a new company to make camera drones Business Insider Retrieved 2020 08 03 Gartenberg Chaim 2021 01 11 This is Sony s Airpeak drone The Verge Retrieved 2021 01 12 Group Corporate Information Sony Semiconductor Solutions Group Sony Semiconductor Solutions Group Retrieved 2020 08 03 Sony Global Sony History Chapter4 Ibuka s First Visit to the United States www sony net Retrieved 2021 03 09 1952 Bell Labs Licenses Transistor Technology The Silicon Engine Computer History Museum www computerhistory org Retrieved 2020 09 28 The Nobel Prize in Physics 1973 NobelPrize org Retrieved 2020 10 06 s CCD market shares Sony 41 Matsushita 14 6 Sharp 13 8 ZDNet Retrieved 2021 01 16 CMOS IMAGE SENSOR CIS INDUSTRY OVERVIEW www yole fr Archived from the original on 2021 01 21 Retrieved 2021 01 16 Products Products List Sony Semiconductor Solutions Group Sony Semiconductor Solutions Group Retrieved 2020 08 03 Lorbeer pi Klaus 2020 05 14 Sony launcht weltweit erste Intelligent Vision Sensoren mit KI Verarbeitung computerwelt at in German Archived from the original on 2021 05 15 Retrieved 2021 05 15 The PlayStation Quest Macleans 6 November 2000 81 ABI INFORM Global ProQuest Research Library Web 27 May 2012 Pilling David Camera Sales Raise Sonys Game Financial Times 23 ABI INFORM Global 27 July 2007 Web 27 May 2012 Makuch Eddie PS3 overtakes Xbox 360 in worldwide shipments Report GameSpot Archived from the original on 2013 03 21 PLAYSTATION 4 SELLS 5 9 MILLION UNITS WORLDWIDE DURING THE 2017 HOLIDAY SEASON Press release San Mateo Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc 2018 01 08 Retrieved 2018 04 16 via sie com Sony leads virtual reality patent race hypergridbusiness com Layden Shawn 2016 10 13 PlayStation VR Launches Today Across the United States and Canada Murphy Darragh 2021 02 03 PS5 sales figures revealed and they are staggering Laptop Magazine Retrieved 2021 08 17 Sundstrand Selling Trans Com Systems To Sony Associated Press 1991 07 10 Retrieved 2018 08 12 Rockwell Collins Acquires Sony Trans Com 2000 06 01 Retrieved 2018 08 12 2011 Market Share and Box Office Results by Movie Studio Box Office Mojo 2011 12 31 Retrieved 2012 11 09 Business Overview Annual Report 2010 PDF Archived 2010 12 24 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 7 July 2011 Sony Pictures Corporate Factsheet sonypictures com Archived 4 November 2005 at the Wayback Machine Bates James Claudia Eller 1996 11 20 Sony President Puts Best Face on Studio Woes Los Angeles Times p D1 Sony admits fixes problem with DVD DRM Ars Technica Hack at Sony Pictures shuts computer system Los Angeles Times Sony completes 2 billion purchase of CBS Records upi com 5 January 1988 Retrieved on 3 December 2017 Brown Bob 2010 11 01 Sony BMG rootkit scandal 5 years later Network World Retrieved 2015 02 20 Sony to Buy Gracenote Music Data Company ABC News 2008 04 23 Retrieved 2015 02 11 Tribune To Acquire Sony Audio Recognition Unit Gracenote For 170 Million 2013 12 23 Halperin Shirley 2012 06 30 Sold EMI Music Publishing to Consortium Led by Sony ATV Michael Jackson Estate for 2 2 Billion The Hollywood Reporter Sony in 2 3 billion deal for EMI becomes world s biggest music publisher Reuters 2018 05 02 Retrieved 2020 07 12 Christman Ed 2012 09 30 Sony Finalizes Acquisition of Michael Jackson Estate s Stake in Sony ATV Publishing Billboard Retrieved 2016 10 01 Moore D M 2020 12 09 Sony s Funimation acquires anime streaming service Crunchyroll for 1 175 billion Polygon Retrieved 2021 01 12 Sony sets out to conquer entertainment world with anime Nikkei Asia Retrieved 2021 01 12 Spangler Todd 2019 09 24 Sony Merges Anime Streaming Businesses Under Funimation Led Joint Venture EXCLUSIVE Variety Retrieved 2021 01 12 Hu Makiko Yamazaki Krystal 2020 12 10 Sony to buy AT amp T s anime business for 1 18 billion to expand global footprint Reuters Retrieved 2020 12 10 Mateo Alex 2021 08 09 Sony s Funimation Global Group Completes Acquisition of Crunchyroll from AT amp T Anime News Network Retrieved 2021 08 09 Rathi Akshat 2019 10 09 Winners of the 2019 Nobel Prize in chemistry developed lithium ion batteries Quartz Retrieved 2020 08 03 Joseph Volpe Sony eyes electric car future wants to soon sell you Li ion batteries Engadget AOL Sony CEO says will explore tie ups in EV batteries Electric Vehicle News electric vehiclenews com Sony to make batteries for electric cars Silicon Republic NRG eVgo Completes Largest Corporate Installation of Electric Vehicle Charging Stations in Southern California EV News Report EV News Report Signing of Memorandum of Understanding for the Transfer of Battery Business Press release Murata Manufacturing Co Ltd amp Sony Corporation 2016 07 28 Retrieved 2016 10 06 Sony tests the waters for self driving cars with a small investment Engadget Retrieved 2021 01 16 O Kane Sean 2020 01 07 Sony surprises with an electric concept car called the Vision S The Verge Sony Highlights its Evolution as a Creative Entertainment Company with a Solid Foundation of Technology at CES 2020 Sony Press Centre 2020 01 07 Honda amp Sony establish SHM joint venture electrive com 2022 10 15 Retrieved 2022 10 29 Sugiyama Satoshi Shiraki Maki 2022 10 13 Sony Honda aim to deliver premium EV with subscription fees in 2026 Reuters Retrieved 2022 10 29 Hawkins Andrew J 2023 01 05 Sony and Honda just announced their new electric car brand Afeela The Verge Sony Global Stock Information www sony net Retrieved 2020 10 01 コロナに負けない 金持ち企業 トップ500社 企業ランキング 東洋経済オンライン in Japanese 2020 06 02 Retrieved 2020 07 11 a b Sony Too Much make Believe FT com 2011 n a ABI INFORM Global ProQuest Research Library Web 26 May 2012 Fujimura Naoko 2011 12 12 Sony s Shopping Spree Is Wrong Direction in Apple Battle Tech Bloomberg News Retrieved 2011 12 18 10 Year Financials of sne Sony Corp Adr Archived 2020 09 04 at the Wayback Machine Gurufocus com Retrieved on 25 April 2012 McCurry Justin 2008 12 09 Sony to cut 8 000 jobs worldwide The Guardian London Retrieved 2010 05 23 Sony expected to slash 10 000 jobs Retrieved 2012 04 09 Yasu Mariko Ozasa Shunichi 2012 04 11 Sony Sharp Losing 11 Billion Leaves Investors Let Down Bloomberg News Sony ups ad spend to Rs 450 cr The Hindu 2012 06 07 Ewing Adam Yasu Mariko 2012 08 23 Sony to Cut 1 000 Jobs to Reduce Costs at Mobile Unit Bloomberg News Sony sees return to profit aims to halve TV losses Reuters 2012 05 10 Interwiki map discontinued Meta meta wikimedia org Retrieved 2019 07 04 Sony to sell its U S headquarters building for 1 1 billion Reuters 2013 01 18 Chilson Morgan Labels Sony Credit Rating Junk Amid Lower Demand Moneynews Archived from the original on 2014 10 23 Retrieved 2014 01 28 Sony to cut as many as 5 000 jobs unload Vaio USA Today Retrieved 2014 02 06 Greenway David 2014 10 02 Sony to close South African TV HiFi and camera division htxt africa Retrieved 2019 07 04 Sony rethinks SA strategy amid huge loss businesstech co za Retrieved 2019 07 04 Sony launches first SA store Fin24 2017 04 06 Archived from the original on 2019 01 17 Retrieved 2019 07 04 Sony photo gear back in South Africa With Black Friday 2017 vouchers Retrieved 2019 07 04 Sony Global FY2018 Earnings Announcement www sony net Retrieved 2019 06 02 Sony mobile is losing more than gaming division is gaining which is a lot of money Android Authority 2018 11 01 Retrieved 2021 01 16 March 2019 Steve McCaskill 29 2019 03 29 Sony shuts China smartphone plant TechRadar Retrieved 2021 01 16 Vasile Cosmin Report Sony to lay off half of its mobile division staff by 2020 2 000 people Phone Arena Retrieved 2021 01 16 Guide to Greener Electronics 17th Edition Greenpeace International November 2011 Retrieved 2018 08 20 a b Guide to Greener Electronics Greenpeace International Greenpeace International Retrieved 2011 11 16 Greener electronics Sony ranking Fourth Edition Greenpeace International 2007 06 27 Retrieved 2018 08 20 Samson Ted 2007 07 09 Sony hits bottom of Greenpeace eco rankings InfoWorld Retrieved 2010 10 05 Guide to Greener Electronics 2017 Greenpeace International Retrieved 2018 05 17 History of Environmental Activities at Sony Archived from the original on 2008 02 08 Retrieved 2022 01 03 Retrieved 7 July 2011 Sony Group Environmental Vision Archived from the original on 2007 11 27 Retrieved 2022 01 03 Web archive org 27 November 2007 Retrieved 7 July 2011 Sony develops World s Most Powerful Sugar based Bio Battery Prototype Techgadgets in 24 August 2007 Retrieved 7 July 2011 Knight Danielle 2000 09 22 Sony s PR War on Activists Mother Jones Retrieved 2010 10 05 EU fines Sony others for videotape price fixes Reuters 2007 11 20 Retrieved 2022 11 22 EU fines Sony Fuji Maxell for videotape price fixing Budapest Business Journal 2007 11 21 Retrieved 2022 11 22 UNICEF and Sony photo workshop promotes rights with Darwin s indigenous youth unicef org au Archived from the original on 2013 05 16 Seeing Mali a digital project for children in pictures The Guardian 2011 06 16 Sony helps S African mobile library project japantoday com Retrieved 2015 02 11 Cashmere Paul 2012 10 05 Sony Foundation Funds Salvos Sound Point Centre In Goodna noise11 com Retrieved 2015 02 11 Sony Foundation raises over 880k with Wharf4Ward mcvpacific com 2014 10 24 Archived from the original on 2017 09 19 Retrieved 2015 02 12 Beavis Simon 2011 05 26 Sony engaging untapped audience through crowdsourcing The Guardian Stadiums to go streetfootballworld partners with Sony to support Brazilian and Latin American communities streetfootballworld 2014 03 07 Archived from the original on 2015 02 11 Sony Street Stadiums streetfootballworld 2014 03 07 Archived from the original on 2018 11 06 Retrieved 2016 04 10 Tartaglione Nancy 2020 04 02 Sony Establishes 100M COVID 19 Global Relief Fund Deadline Retrieved 2020 09 16 Further readingMade in Japan by Akio Morita and Sony HarperCollins 1994 ISBN missing Sony The Private Life by John Nathan Houghton Mifflin 1999 ISBN missing The Japan Project Made in Japan a documentary about Sony s early history in the U S by Terry Sanders ISBN missing The Portable Radio in American Life by Michael Brian Schiffer The University of Arizona Press 1991 Sony Radio Sony Transistor Radio 35th Anniversary 1955 1990 information booklet 1990 ISBN missing External linksSony at Wikipedia s sister projects Definitions from Wiktionary Media from Commons News from Wikinews Quotations from Wikiquote Texts from Wikisource Textbooks from Wikibooks Resources from Wikiversity Official website Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Sony amp oldid 1148836461, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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