Nowadays there are many companies in the field of consumer electronics and every year they surprise us in Cusco with new and novel products. One of the largest companies in this field is Sony, a Japanese multinational company, which in its beginnings was not as we know it today.
Sony originated in the 40s after the Second World War. It was founded in 1946 under the name of Tokyo Telecommunication Engineer (Totsuko) by engineers Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita, two experts in the field who had worked for the Japanese army. Its first product was a rice cooker which was not very successful. Due to the failure of this invention, they decided to change sectors and in 1950 Totsuko launched the first tape recorder ,one of the most innovative devices of that time; it implemented a new concept of storage and recording.
After the success of the recorders, the company started with a new project that revolutionized the radio world, the TR45, the first transistor radio in Japan. Before the launch, they had to pay Western Electric the sum of $ 25,000 dollars for the transistor’s licenses, practically leaving the company in bankruptcy. Thanks to the great demand that they had with this product, they could overcome the crisis.
Totsuko was ready to internationalize its company. First they needed to create a more solid brand image in order to overcome cultural barriers, so they decided to change the name of the company to a name much easier to pronounce. Totsuko it was thence forward called Sony.
After this ,Sony started its new project in the field of television, launching in 1960 the TV8-301, the first television that worked with transistors. Its greatest success in this field was Trinitron in 1968, a color television. Sony over time continued to innovate, launching in 1975 the revolutionary Betamax, an analog video format that would be the video version of the classic audio case.
The most emblematic product of Sony came in the year 1979. the Walkman, the first portable music player in the world. Thanks to this revolutionary concept and to its accessible price, they came to sell more than 385 million units. By 1982, Sony, partnering with Philips, launched the first compact disc and with that, the era of digital music began.
The desire of the company to cover all possible markets within the technology sector led to the launch in 1994 of the Play Station one of the most important consoles in the video game market. It meant a huge turning point in offering technologies that had not been integrated into other consoles of the time. Launching in 2000 the Play Station 2 became the best-selling video game console in history with 157 million units. Years later Sony would launch its line of mobile devices under the Sony Ericsson brand.
In the following years, Sony would stop being in the forefront of innovation since other brands began to launch new products with more innovative and better features. An example of this is the arrival of the iPhone that revolutionized the audio and video consumption format.
The only field in which Sony continues to innovate is the field of Video Games, where it currently leads with his Play Station 4 and his future Play Station 5. Sony has been one of the companies that has contributed innovations for 4 decades since the first radios transistor until the compact disks, and is consolidated within the technology sector.
