Sony Corporation

The company was founded in 1946 by Masaru Ibuku and Akio Morita as Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering) and first used the name Sony in 1955 as a brand name for marketing its first transistor radio. In 1958, it was renamed the Sony Corporation. By 1970, Sony was established as one of the world’s leading and most innovative manufacturers of consumer electronic products. Sony is particularly known for its miniaturization of a range of electronic goods and for its modern, minimalist approach to design.

Sony entered the consumer electronics market with its launch in 1950 of the G-type tape recorder, the first commercially available Japanese model. A more significant early milestone was the acquisition of a license to produce transistors in 1954, the same year that the world’s first transistor radio was manufactured in the United States. A year later, Sony launched its first transistor radio, the TR-55. Sony’s great contribution to transistor production was to reduce the failure rate in the production process, thus reducing the costs. Sony’s predilection for miniaturization became evident in 1957 when it introduced the world’s first pocket-size transistor radio, the TR-63. The still smaller and lighter TR-610 pocket transistor radio of 1958 featured a hinged wire stand and came in a range of colors.