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Sony.com

PROFILE

The Sony Corporation has a strong hold on all the movies, music, and entertainment that the world views and listens to. Aside from making those great mediums, the Sony Corporation also makes the equipment that brings the experience of the music and video to the viewer. Making Playstations, which alone accounts for about 11% of the electronics and entertainment sales, DVD players, Camcorders, Mini-Disc players, CD players and an assortment of other electronic devices, these products account for about two thirds of revenues of Sony and have made the company the power house that it is today.
The Sony Corporation has many subsidiaries across the globe but the largest of these companies in located in the United States of America. Covering all types of genres and mediums, the conglomerate Sony has basically covered all bases in the electronic market. Being connected from Colombia House to Dawson's Creek, the Sony Corporation is truely the company that will take us into the future of technology.

Average Income: $56.6 billion during 1999
Sales in the United States: $18.0 billion
Workers: 177,000 employees worldwide during 1999
28,200 employees in the United States
Ticker Symbol: SNE
Exchange: NYSE
Sony's Current Stock Price and Chart
Sony's Annual Report
Corporate Data

HISTORY

    The Sony Corporation, originally called the Tokyo Tsushin Kenkyujo"(Totsuken), or "Tokyo Telecommunications Research Institute, was established in 1945 by Masaru Ibuka. Although the name of the company did not stay the same, the vision of Ibuka held strong as he had visions of a new beginning after World War II.
    On May 7 of 1946, Ibuka and an associate named Akio Morita opened the Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K. (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation) and with only twenty employees the two embarked on a company that years later would be worth billions.
    With the 38 year old Ibuka devoting his time to technological research and product development, the 25 year old Morita worked in the areas of globalization, marketing, finance and human resource, and was the one that took on the responsibility as management of the company.

     In 1958 the company decided to change the name to Sony, a name that was easier to pronounce, as Ibuka and Morita had dreams of going globally. Although the name Sony didn't appeal to many at first because Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo was already popular, Morita convinced others that it was important to have an easily pronounceable and easy to remember name.
    In 1960, the Sony Corporation was established in the United States and was set up to be one of the main facilities for the Sony Corporation around the world. Selling stocks on the New York Stock Exchange in 1961, Sony was the first Japanese company to offer shares on the stock market and that paved ways for the other Japanese companies coming out at that time.
    Not only focusing on electronics, the Sony Corporation entered the music industry in 1968 by establishing CBS/Sony Group Incorporated. This business partnership with CBS continued in 1988 when Sony acquired CBS Records Inc. and a year later Sony acquired Colombia Pictures Entertainment, Inc., making them the well diversified company that it has come to be known today.

EXECUTIVE OFFICERS

Norio Ohga
        Chairman and Representative Director, Sony Corporation
Nobuyuki Idei
        President and Chief Executive Officer, Sony Corporation
Yang Hun Lee
        Executive Vice President, Sony Corporation of America
Howard Stringer
        Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Sony Corporation of America
Marinus Henny
        Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Sony Corporation of America

PLANS FOR THE FUTURE

With Sony continuing to be a power house of production and technological advancements, Sony is planning to build hand-held gadgets that would allow an individual to listen to music, view videos, and organize information. They plan to do this all without using the Windows operating system, thus pitting Sony against Microsoft. Using what is called a Palm operating system, 3Com, the company credited with the technology that is going to be used in the hand-held devices, agreed to make the system compatible with the Sony Memory Stick. The Memory Stick is a removable storage medium that can store and transfer data.
Sony also plans to get into the personal video recorder (PVC) scene with the agreement that they made with Tivo, the creator of personal television. As stated in the agreement, Sony will produce personal video recorders that pick up the Tivo service signal and also Sony purchased a portion of the company. This agreement is non-exclusive, but with a Sony on the Tivo's Board of Director's this could be yet another area in which Sony is going to corner the market.