77 years ago, yesterday, on May 7, 1946, Sony was born. Its first product was an electric rice cooker.

They used to sell these from a departmental store – Shirkoiya Department Store at Nihonbashi (Great Tokyo).

Sony was not the original name of the brand. The rice cooker had its own brand. Then in 1955, the name Sony was born. It was a concocted word, which was picked to have ‘global’ appeal. It combined “sonus” and “sonny”, where “sonus” is Latin for sound and “sonny” means little son. The name was meant to represent a group of young people who innovate.

Aside from the rice cooker, Sony mainly focused on fixing radios. That led to development of their own radio – the pocket size radio Sony TR-63. Launched in 1957, the TR-63 quickly became Sony’s first globally successful product.

Sony then focused on televisions. It launched a portable TV in 1960. And it raised the bar in Colour TVs the same year with its Trinitron branded televisions.

Video recording was the next thing Sony attempted, and launched the Sony Betamax. Sony’s Betamax technology was seen as better than VHS and ushered in a new revolution in recording of live TV content

While that was going on, Sony was actually on the verge of another big revolution – wearable music. The Sony Walkman was launched in 1979. 3,000 units sold in the first month. 2 million sold in the first 1.5 years and an incredible 400 million walkman devices were sold over the next 30 years.

Sony would keep innovating in TV, with the launch of the Watchman Pocket TV in 1982…

That same year… the first CD was released as well, which was based on technology Sony helped develop. And along-with the first ever CD (Billy Joel’s 52nd Street), Sony also launched their first CD player.

And just two years later in 1984, Sony was pushing ahead with the Sony Discman:

Meanwhile, on the large-format video-watching front, Sony not only launched the concept of a large-scale display of televised content, but also coined the name ‘jumbo-tron’ and launched the world’s first ever Jumbotron in 1985 to highlight its video innovation.

And in that same year, Sony launched the world’s first ever camcorder with the aptly named Sony Handycam.

Meanwhile, Sony had wanted a film company to complement its electronics business. So in 1989, it bought one – Columbia Pictures.

Next it was the turn of miniaturisation of things with the Sony MiniDisc launching in 1992.

And two years later, Sony made a major contribution to the gaming world, with the launch of the Sony PlayStation, released in 1994.

Sony would need to keep up in world of computers and laptops.

The Sony Vaio brand launched in 1996.

However, this wasn’t Sony’s first foray into computing.

Sony had lots of ties to the computer industry before Vaio. The Sony Floppy Disk was used with the Mac way back in 1984.

Sony was one of the first players in the consumer robot market.

Sony Aibo was unveiled in 1999

And 30 years after the Betamax vs VHS battle, Sony would battle it out in the DVD technology wars with Sony Blu-Ray DVD and the Sony Blu-Ray DVD Player.

The next battle would be in the phone market. There were the early Sony Ericsson phones in 2002 and even a Sony Walkman phone in 2005.

Soon, with the advent of smartphones, came the Xperia 10 – a phone that would be seen as a potential iPhone killer.

Over the years Sony has undertaken brilliant innovation in almost all the products indicated above that are still in use and achieved excellence in almost all of them.

Innovation is tough. If any company knows that, it’s Sony. They’ve been at it now for 77 years. And most of these innovations have been category-creators. i.e. The product category did not exist before Sony created it. From Digital Cinematography to LED displays, from video to audio, from Film to TV, Sony is deeply entrenched in all our lives and has impacted the world much more than they get credit for.

Let’s hope that more and more of these continue in our lives while we wish SONY a Happy 77th Birthday!!!

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P.S. I have had extensive dealings with Sony. At all levels. Whistling Woods International hosts the Sony Media Tech Centre (SMTC), which has been introducing pioneering products and workflows in Digital Cinematography to filmmaking students for over a decade now. Through the SMTC, I have been privileged to have interacted extensively with several people from Sony including their local & global senior management, all the way up to their (former) President, CEO & MD – Sir Howard Stringer.

In all my dealings with Sony over the years, I have never had a situation where something was not of the highest quality possible, so the Sony’s 77 years of innovation tagline as above resonates strongly with me.

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