Where it all began: The history of Sony
Sony is a Japanese company created after the war, founded by businessman Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka by the engineer in 1946 when they built the first tape recorder in Japan
As Sony's own account, the company name is derived from the word "sound" (sonus, in Latin). In addition, the name also happened with the English slang "Sonny Boys", which then could be understood with what we now mean by 'boys cool' - and both are considered 'cool'. In addition, the original name - Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo - was regarded as very difficult to speak for Americans.
In the 1950s, Ibuka met the newly-invented the transistor at Bell Labs in the United States, and soon persuaded to license the technology in your business. This was one of the most important steps the company, because from there to get Sony to launch, years later, several products related to sound and image, and even games, as discussed below.
Listen to your music with Sony Walkman (1978)
Previously it was not easy listening music, even when people had a radio at home. To listen to music while you were walking, then forget it! There was nothing of MP3 players. In fact, there was still no MP3.
Who today has more than 25 years got to know the famous Walkman, the portable cassette player. But what few know is that is the hallmark of Walkman cassette player from Sony, that is, the invention was so striking that the brand became the name of the product, as well as with Gillette, which is actually a blade shaving.
The Sony Walkman was invented in 1978 by engineer Nobutoshi Kihara, as a work for Morita, a founder quoted above. Morita made his voyages across the Pacific Ocean, and how these trips were very lengthy, co-founder was eager to hear an opera, to relax.
What was the first Walkman model TPS-L2, which went on sale in July 1979 in Japan and was taken to the United States the following year. The success was overwhelming, and Sony has invaded the world market with their Walkmans.
Years later (to be exact, in 1984) Sony has released a CD player, in which he called "Discman", and like the Walkman, in this case also became a brand name product.
Recently, with the wave of MP3 players, driven by the iPod, Sony released its own MP3 players, reviving the Walkman brand. Thus, the user might have thousands of songs and devices about the size of a lighter, and with very good battery life, very different from the initial scenario of the tapes, which had very little room for music.
The games were never the same after the PlayStation series (1994)
In the early 90's, the gaming market was dominated by two companies: Sega, the Sega Genesis and Saturn, and Nintendo, which had the Nintendo (NES) and Super Nintendo (SNES). But even with this scenario played, Sony set out to launch its own video games, announced on December 3, 1994 that it would be a watershed in the gaming market: the PlayStation.
The origins of the Playstation, however, date back to the previous decade: the project started in 1986.
Sony and Nintendo have made a joint project to launch an expansion of CD-ROM for the Super Nintendo. The project was announced in 1991 at the Consumer Electronic Show, but a day later, Nintendo broke the partnership and continued the project with Philips.
After this separation, say the president of Sony, Norio Ohga, and was "upset" with the collapse of the partnership, and after some negotiations with the executive committee, the project was transferred to Sony Music which later formed the Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (which now handles the PlayStation).
The first PlayStation has sold about 103 million units, including sales of the PlayStation One Moreover, there were only 7,978 titles released for this console - in absolute record time.
After all the success, Sony has launched the second generation of its console, the PlayStation 2, which appeared on the market in May 2000. The console will compete with Nintendo's Game Cube, Sega Dreamcast and Microsoft Xbox.
The success of the Playstation 2 was so great that the console has sold over 148 million units, the only game to surpass the record of its predecessor. One of the innovations introduced in the new version was the Dual Shock, which shook depending on the interactions with the games.
After him, the last game was released by Sony PlayStation 3, which competes directly with Microsoft's XBox 360.
For the PlayStation 3 was a very heavy investment in technology, bringing high-resolution games, reading Blu-Ray and HD storage. Another breakthrough was the possibility of gamers playing online in a unified network, the Playstation Network, where it was also possible to buy games and expansions to their original titles.
In addition to these innovations, the control was also released Move to the players to have an experience of movement similar to the Nintendo Wii. But with fierce competition with the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii, the PlayStation 3 sold just 50 million units.
Movies in High Definition? Watch Blu-Ray (2006)
The film market was well heated with DVD sales around the world, but the companies worked to launch a new disk that can store more information. In this way, they could show films with a higher quality picture and sound. And in this fight, emerged as an alternative to Blu-Ray.
Sony and other companies formed a consortium called Blu-ray Disc Association, in order to promote the new media. He was a disc capable of storing up to 50 GB of data, about 10 times more than the DVD.
In the beginning, the Blu-Ray was a fierce competitor, the HD-DVD, which was produced by a consortium of companies led by Toshiba is also Japanese.
But this format war, Blu-Ray eventually won the battle in February 2008, when Toshiba announced that it will discontinue its HD-DVDs.
One of the reasons why the victory of Blu-Ray compared to HD-DVD was the launch of PlayStation 3 by Sony. With a video game desired by many and a lower price than most of the HD-DVD players in the market, Sony has in one stroke to win the games and movie lovers seeking experiences for high resolution.
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The name Blu-Ray, for those unaware, comes from the blue laser that reads the disc, being literally the name "Disco Blue". But the "Blu" is different from "Blue", in English, referring to the blue. But that only happened because in some countries is not allowed to register a common name, and therefore it was necessary to create a distinguished name for the disc.
Surely the creations of Sony in brand over time and hope that the new creations will bring us many benefits. And you reader, that Sony products you use or have used?
