Innovation & Wealth › Mass production & the consumer age › East Asian economic miracles
Sony (Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka)
founded May 1946· Company or fortune· Companies & fortunes
Well documentedSolid records, texts or physical evidence.
A Tokyo start-up of 1946 that made small, premium electronics, from transistor radios to the Walkman and PlayStation, sold worldwide.
See it on the Innovation & Wealth map →What happened
Engineer Masaru Ibuka and physicist Akio Morita founded Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo in May 1946 in a bomb-damaged Tokyo department store. In 1953 they licensed Bell Labs' transistor for $25,000 and built Japan's first transistor radio (1955), then a shirt-pocket model (1957). Renamed Sony in 1958, it profited from premium-priced, compact products: Trinitron TVs (1968), the Walkman (1979), the compact disc with Philips (1982) and PlayStation (1994).
Impact on society and the economy
Sony turned 'Made in Japan' from a byword for cheap copies into a mark of quality and helped make Japan an export power. American radio and TV makers lost much of their market.
How we know
Morita's memoir Made in Japan (1986), Sony's corporate histories, the 1953 Western Electric license, sales records, and John Nathan's Sony: The Private Life (1999).
Still debated
Why Sony, inventor of the Walkman, lost portable music to Apple's iPod is debated: internal rivalries, copyright caution from its own music arm, or weak software.
Connections (2)
▸Transistor (Bell Labs) was licensed for radios by Sony (Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka)Well documented
The connection
In 1953 Morita paid Western Electric, AT&T's manufacturing arm, $25,000 for a transistor license, though Japan's trade ministry at first balked at spending scarce dollars. Bell engineers thought transistors suited hearing aids; Sony improved them for radio and launched Japan's first transistor radio, the TR-55, in 1955, then the pocket-size TR-63 for export in 1957.
When and how
License agreed in 1953–54 between Western Electric and Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo; radios built in Tokyo; the TR-63 sold widely in the US from 1957.
How we know
License records, Morita's memoir and Sony's product histories document the deal and the radios.
Debates
The first transistor radio was American, the Regency TR-1 of 1954. Why Sony rather than US firms came to dominate is debated: price, quality, marketing, or US firms' disinterest.
▸Sony (Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka) inspired the design ideals of Steve Jobs and AppleMostly agreed
The connection
Jobs admired Sony's sleek, simple products and its blend of engineering, design and marketing. Visiting Sony in the early 1980s, he asked Akio Morita why workers wore uniforms; the answer inspired his own black turtlenecks, made by Sony's uniform designer Issey Miyake. Apple later beat Sony at portable music when the iPod displaced the Walkman.
When and how
Tokyo and Cupertino; Jobs's visits to Sony in the early 1980s; the iPod (2001) and iTunes Store (2003) overtook Sony's Walkman line.
How sure are we?
Walter Isaacson's authorized biography records Jobs's admiration for Sony and Morita, including the uniform story; the design influence is widely noted but partly anecdotal.
Debates
How much Apple's design owed to Sony versus Braun's Dieter Rams, whom designer Jony Ive revered, or Jobs's own Bauhaus and Zen interests is debated.