SONY (GRUNDIG) SLV-723 YEAR 1990.

Sony Corporation (Sonī Kabushiki Gaisha) (TYO: 6758, NYSE: SNE), or commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate with revenue exceeding ¥ 7.730.0 trillion, or US$77.20 billion (FY2010).[3] Sony is one of the leading manufacturers of electronics, products for the consumer and professional markets.

Sony Corporation is the electronics business unit and the parent company of the Sony Group, which is engaged in business through its eight operating segments – Consumer Products & Devices (CPD), Networked Products & Services (NPS), B2B & Disc Manufacturing (B2B & Disc), Pictures, Music, Financial Services, Sony Ericsson and All Other.[5][6] These make Sony one of the most comprehensive entertainment companies in the world. Sony's principal business operations include Sony Corporation (Sony Electronics in the U.S.), Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment, Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Ericsson, and Sony Financial. As a semiconductor maker, Sony is among the Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Sales Leaders.

Its founders Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka derived the name from sonus, the Latin word for sound, and also from the English slang word "sonny", since they considered themselves to be "sonny boys", a loan word into Japanese which in the early 1950s connoted smart and presentable young men.

History
Masaru Ibuka, the co-founder of Sony:

In late 1945, after the end of World War II, Masaru Ibuka started a radio repair shop in a bomb-damaged department store building in Nihonbashi of Tokyo. The next year, he was joined by his colleague, Akio Morita, and they founded a company called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K., (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation). The company built Japan's first tape recorder called the Type-G.

In the early 1950s, Ibuka traveled in the United States and heard about Bell Labs' invention of the transistor.[8] He convinced Bell to license the transistor technology to his Japanese company. While most American companies were researching the transistor for its military applications, Ibuka and Morita looked to apply it to communications. Although the American companies Regency[disambiguation needed] and Texas Instruments built the first transistor radios, it was Ibuka's company that made them commercially successful for the first time.

In August 1955, Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo released the Sony TR-55, Japan's first commercially produced transistor radio.[9] They followed up in December of the same year by releasing the Sony TR-72, a product that won favor both within Japan and in export markets, including Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and Germany. Featuring six transistors, push-pull output and greatly improved sound quality, the TR-72 continued to be a popular seller into the early sixties.

In May 1956, the company released the TR-6, which featured an innovative slim design and sound quality capable of rivaling portable tube radios. It was for the TR-6 that Sony first contracted "Atchan", a cartoon character created by Fuyuhiko Okabe, to become its advertising character. Now known as "Sony Boy", the character first appeared in a cartoon ad holding a TR-6 to his ear, but went on to represent the company in ads for a variety of products well into the mid-sixties.[8] The following year, 1957, Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo came out with the TR-63 model, then the smallest (112 × 71 × 32 mm) transistor radio in commercial production. It was a worldwide commercial success.[8]

University of Arizona professor Michael Brian Schiffer, Ph.D., says, "Sony was not first, but its transistor radio was the most successful. The TR-63 of 1957 cracked open the U.S. market and launched the new industry of consumer microelectronics." By the mid 1950s, American teens had begun buying portable transistor radios in huge numbers, helping to propel the fledgling industry from an estimated 100,000 units in 1955 to 5,000,000 units by the end of 1968.

Sony's headquarters moved to Minato, Tokyo from Shinagawa, Tokyo around the end of 2006.[10][11]
Origin of 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 TKK.[8] 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 Morita discovered that there was an American company already using Teletech as a brand name.[12]

The name "Sony" was chosen for the brand as a mix of two words. One was the Latin word Sonus which is the root of "sonic" and "sound" and the other was "sonny," a familiar term used in 1950s America to call a boy.[7] The first Sony-branded product, the TR-55 transistor radio, 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 to spell its name instead of writing it in kanji. The move was not without opposition: TTK's principal bank at the time, Mitsui, had strong feelings about the name. They pushed for a name such as Sony Electronic Industries, or Sony Teletech. Akio Morita was firm, however, as he did not want the company name tied to any particular industry. Eventually, both Ibuka and Mitsui Bank's chairman gave their approval.






Grundig AG is (WAS) a German manufacturer of consumer electronics for home entertainment which transferred to Turkish control in the period 2004-2007. Established in 1945 in Nuremberg, Germany by Max Grundig the company changed hands several times before becoming part of the Turkish Koç Holding group. In 2007, after buying control of the Grundig brand, Koc renamed its Beko Elektronik white goods and consumer electronics division Grundig Elektronik A.Ş.^[1], which has decided to merge with Arçelik A.Ş. as declared on February 27, 2009


Max Grundig (7 May 1908 – 8 December 1989) was the founder of electronics company Grundig AG. He was raised by his parents in Nuremberg, where he delayed his final school exams (Abitur) and completed training as an electrician. In 1930 he and a colleague opened a store selling radios under the name Fuerth, Grundig & Wurzer (RVF), generating one million Reichsmark in sales by 1938. After World War II business expanded with a successful range of consumer electronics. In 1972 the company became a corporation and was sold to Philips in 1984.
His company was one of the first to produce frequency modulated radios, cutting out static interference for clearer reception. In 1952, it was one of the first European companies to start producing TV sets.
Grundig built his company up after World War II to become a market leader in home entertainment products and a symbol of West Germany's Wirtschaftswunder. It was only in the late 1970s that it began to lose some of its marketshare as it came under increasing pressure from lower priced Japanese products, and in 1980 the company recorded its first losses.
Grundig's answer to the Asian competition was to form EURO, a common front of European manufacturers. It did not stave off the challenge, however, and the company was forced to close eleven plants and cut its workforce from thirty-five thousand to twenty-nine thousand workers. In 1984, the Dutch Philips group bought out nearly a third share and took over the management.
Colleagues described Max Grundig, the son of a warehouse manager, as a workaholic who made decisions alone and interested by himself in the minutest detail of his business.
"Order is holy to him; it means as much as half," was an official company description of him.
Grundig's father died when he was twelve and his mother had to support her five children on a factory wage.
Young Max started his working life as a plumber's apprentice but by the age of twenty-two had set up his own radio shop with a friend in Nuremberg.
After World War II, he was permitted by the Allies to relocate his business to the Franconian city of Fuerth where he set up his own factory to produce radio parts.
He was married to Chantal Grundig.

Early history

The history of the company began in 1930 with the establishment of a store named Fuerth, Grundig & Wurzer (RVF), which sold radios. After World War II Max Grundig recognized the need for radios in Germany, and in 1947 produced a kit, while a factory and administration centre were under construction at Fürth. In 1951 the first televisions were manufactured at the new facility with the company and the surrounding area growing rapidly. At the time Grundig was the largest radio manufacturer in Europe. Divisions in Nuremberg, Frankfurt and Karlsruhe were set up.

Grundig in Belfast

A plant was opened in 1960 to manufacture tape recorders in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the first production by Grundig outside Germany. The managing director of the plant Thomas Niedermayer, was kidnapped and later killed by the Provisional IRA in December 1973.^[3] The factory was closed with the loss of around 1000 jobs in 1980.

Philips takeover

In 1972, Grundig GmbH became Grundig AG. After this Philips began to gradually accumulate shares in the company over the course of many years, and assumed complete control in 1993. Philips resold Grundig to a Bavarian consortium in 1998 due to unsatisfactory performance.

Later history

At the end of June 2000 the company relocated its headquarters in Fürth and Nuremberg. Grundig lost €1.281 million the following year. In autumn 2002, Grundig's banks did not extend the company's lines of credit, leaving the company with an April 2003 deadline to announce insolvency. Grundig AG declared bankruptcy in 2003, selling its satellite equipment division to Thomson. In 2004 Britain's Alba plc and the Turkish Koc's Beko jointly took over Grundig Home InterMedia System, Grundig's consumer electronics division. In 2007 Alba sold its half of the business to Beko for US$50.3 million,^[5] although it retained the licence to use the Grundig brand in the UK until 2010, and in Australasia until 2012.