, commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in

Minato, Tokyo is a special ward in Tokyo, Japan. It is also called Minato City in English. It was formed in 1947 as a merger of Akasaka, Azabu and Shiba wards following Tokyo City's transformation into Tokyo Metropolis. The modern Minato ward exhibits ...

, Japan. As a major

technology company A technology company (or tech company) is an electronics-based technological company, including, for example, business relating to digital electronics, software, and internet-related services, such as e-commerce services. Details According to '' ...

, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional electronic products, the largest

video game console A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to ...

company and the largest

video game publisher A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that have been developed either internally by the publisher or externally by a video game developer. They often finance the development, sometimes by paying a video game developer ( ...

. Through Sony Entertainment Inc, it is one of the largest

music companies Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...

(largest

music publisher A music publisher is a type of publisher that specializes in distributing music. Music publishers originally published sheet music. When copyright became legally protected, music publishers started to play a role in the management of the intellect ...

and second largest

record label A record label, or record company, is a brand or trademark of music recordings and music videos, or the company that owns it. Sometimes, a record label is also a publishing company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the produ ...

) 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. Sony, with its 55 percent market share in the

image sensor An image sensor or imager is a sensor that detects and conveys information used to make an image. It does so by converting the variable attenuation of light waves (as they pass through or reflect off objects) into signals, small bursts of c ...

market, is the largest manufacturer of image sensors, the second largest camera manufacturer, and is among the semiconductor sales leaders. It is the world's largest player in the premium TV market for a television of at least 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. Sony Group Corporation is the

holding company A holding company is a company whose primary business is holding a controlling interest in the securities of other companies. A holding company usually does not produce goods or services itself. Its purpose is to own shares of other companies ...

of the , which comprises Sony Corporation, Sony Semiconductor Solutions,

Sony Entertainment Sony Entertainment, Inc. is an American entertainment company established in 2012. It focuses on most of Sony's motion picture, television and music businesses. It is a subsidiary of the Japanese Sony Group Corporation, managed by Sony's Americ ...

( Sony Pictures,

Sony Music Sony Music Entertainment (SME), also known as simply Sony Music, is an American multinational music company. Being owned by the parent conglomerate Sony Group Corporation, it is part of the Sony Music Group, which is owned by Sony Entertainme ...

), Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Financial Group, Sony Creative Products, and others. The company's slogan is ''We are Sony''. Their former slogans were ''The One and Only'' (1979–1982), ''It's a Sony'' (1981–2005), ''like.no.other'' (2005–2009), ''

make.believe The phrase "make.believe" was a global brand strategy for multinational conglomerate corporation Sony. Development and announcement Previously, the company adopted separate strategies in its promotion of entertainment and electronics products.R ...

'' (2009–2013), and ''Be Moved'' (2013–2021). Sony has a weak tie to the

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group is a Japanese multinational banking and financial services institution headquartered in Yurakucho, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. The group operates in retail, corporate, and investment banking segment worldwide. It provides financial products and ser ...

(SMFG)

corporate group A corporate group or group of companies is a collection of parent and subsidiary corporations that function as a single economic entity through a common source of control. These types of groups are often managed by an account manager. The concep ...

, the successor to the

Mitsui is one of the largest ''keiretsu'' in Japan and one of the largest corporate groups in the world. The major companies of the group include Mitsui & Co. ( general trading company), Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Nippon Paper Industries ...

'' keiretsu''. Sony is listed on the

Tokyo Stock Exchange The , abbreviated as Tosho () or TSE/TYO, is a stock exchange located in Tokyo, Japan. It is the third largest stock exchange in the world by aggregate market capitalization of its listed companies, and the largest in Asia. It had 2,292 listed ...

(in which it is a constituent of the

Nikkei 225 The Nikkei 225, or , more commonly called the ''Nikkei'' or the ''Nikkei index'' (), is a stock market index for the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE). It has been calculated daily by the '' Nihon Keizai Shimbun'' (''The Nikkei'') newspaper since 1950 ...

and

TOPIX , commonly known as TOPIX, along with the Nikkei 225, is an important stock market index for the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) in Japan, tracking all domestic companies of the exchange's Prime market division. It is calculated and published by the ...

Core30 indexes) with an additional listing in the form of

American depositary receipts An American depositary receipt (ADR, and sometimes spelled ''depository'') is a negotiable security that represents securities of a foreign company and allows that company's shares to trade in the U.S. financial markets. Shares of many non-U.S ...

listed in the

New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed ...

(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.

History

Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo

Sony began in the wake of World War II. In 1946,

Masaru Ibuka Masaru Ibuka (井深大 ''Ibuka Masaru''; April 11, 1908 – December 19, 1997) was a Japanese electronics industrialist and co-founder of Sony, along with Akio Morita.Kirkup, James"Obituary: Masaru Ibuka,"''Independent'' (London). December 2 ...

started an electronics shop in Shirokiya, a department store building in the Nihonbashi area of

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

. The company started with a capital of ¥190,000 and a total of eight employees. On 7 May 1946, Ibuka was joined by

Akio Morita was a Japanese businessman and co-founder of Sony along with Masaru Ibuka. Early life Akio Morita was born in Nagoya. Morita's family was involved in sake, miso and soy sauce production in the village of Kosugaya (currently a part of Tokoname ...

to establish a company called (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation). The company built Japan's first

tape recorder An audio tape recorder, also known as a tape deck, tape player or tape machine or simply a tape recorder, is a sound recording and reproduction device that records and plays back sounds usually using magnetic tape for storage. In its present ...

, called the Type-G. In 1958, the company changed its name to "Sony".

Name

When ''Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo'' was looking for a romanized name to use to market themselves, they strongly considered using their initials, TTK. The primary reason they did not is that the railway company Tokyo Kyuko was known as TTK. 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

discovered that there was an American company already using Teletech as a brand name. The name "Sony" was chosen for the brand as a mix of two words: one was the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

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.Sony Corporate History (Japanese)
Sony.co.jp. Retrieved 7 July 2011. In 1950s Japan, "sonny boys" was a

loan word A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because the ...

in Japanese, which connoted smart and presentable young men, which Sony founders

and

considered themselves to be. The first Sony-branded product, the TR-55

transistor radio A transistor radio is a small portable radio receiver that uses transistor-based circuitry. Following the invention of the transistor in 1947—which revolutionized the field of consumer electronics by introducing small but powerful, convenient ...

, appeared in 1955, but the company name did not change to Sony until January 1958. At the time of the change, it was extremely unusual for a Japanese company to use

Roman letters The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Ital ...

to spell its name instead of writing it in

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

. The move was not without opposition: TTK's principal bank at the time,