1.
Sony
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Sony Corporation is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation that is headquartered in Kōnan, Minato, Tokyo. Its diversified business includes consumer and professional electronics, gaming, entertainment, the company is one of the leading manufacturers of electronic products for the consumer and professional markets. Sony was ranked 116th on the 2015 list of Fortune Global 500 and these make Sony one of the most comprehensive entertainment companies in the world. The group consists of Sony Corporation, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Financial Holdings and others. Sony is among the Semiconductor sales leaders by year and as of 2013, the companys current slogan is BE MOVED. Their former slogans were make. believe, like. no. other, Sony has a weak tie to the SMFG keiretsu, the successor to the Mitsui keiretsu. Sony began in the wake of World War II, in 1946, Masaru Ibuka started an electronics shop in a department store building in Tokyo. The company had $530 in capital and a total of eight employees, in the following year he was joined by his colleague, Akio Morita, and they founded a company called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo 東京通信工業. The company built Japans first tape recorder, called the Type-G, in 1958 the company changed its name to Sony. When Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo was looking for a name to use to market themselves, they strongly considered using their initials. 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 Akio Morita 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 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 boy. In the 1950s Japan sonny boys, was a word into Japanese which connoted smart and presentable young men. The first Sony-branded product, the TR-55 transistor radio, appeared in 1955, 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, TTKs principal bank at the time and 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 tied to any particular industry. Eventually, both Ibuka and Mitsui Banks chairman gave their approval, according to Schiffer, Sonys TR-63 radio cracked open the U. S. market and launched the new industry of consumer microelectronics
2.
MiniDisc
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MiniDisc is a magneto-optical disc-based data storage format offering a capacity of 74 minutes and, later,80 minutes, of digitized audio or 1 gigabyte of Hi-MD data. Sony brand audio players were on the market from September 1992 until March 2013, MiniDisc was announced by Sony in September 1992 and released that November of that year for sale in Japan and in December in Europe, Canada, the USA and other countries. MiniDiscs were very popular outside of the USA, Sony has ceased development of MD devices, with the last of the players sold by March 2013. It took, however, almost 10 years before their idea was commercialized, Sony had originally intended Digital Audio Tape to be the dominant home digital audio recording format, replacing the analog cassette. Due to technical delays, DAT was not launched until 1989, by the time Sony came up with MiniDisc in late 1992, Philips had introduced a competing system, DCC. This created marketing confusion very similar to the Betamax versus VHS battle of the late 1970s, Sony attempted to license MD technology to other manufacturers, with JVC, Sharp, Pioneer, Panasonic and others all producing their own MD systems. However, non-Sony machines were not widely available in North America, despite having a loyal customer base largely of musicians and audio enthusiasts, MiniDisc met with only limited success. It was relatively popular in Japan during the 1990s but did not enjoy comparable sales in other world markets, since then, recordable CDs, flash memory and HDD and solid-state-based digital audio players such as iPods have become increasingly popular as playback devices. The initial low uptake of MiniDisc was attributed to the number of pre-recorded albums available on MD as relatively few record labels embraced the format. The initial high cost of equipment and blank media was also a factor, mains-powered hi-fi MiniDisc player/recorders never got into the lower price ranges, and most consumers had to connect a portable machine to the hi-fi in order to record. This inconvenience contrasted with the common use of cassette decks as a standard part of an ordinary hi-fi set-up. The biggest competition for MiniDisc came from the emergence of MP3 players, with the Diamond Rio player in 1998 and the Apple iPod, the mass market began to eschew physical media in favor of file-based systems. This allowed the MiniDisc to better compete with HD recorders and MP3 players, on 7 July 2011, Sony announced that it would no longer ship MiniDisc Walkman products as of September 2011, effectively killing the format. On 1 February 2013, Sony issued a release on the Nikkei stock exchange that it will cease shipment of MD devices. However, it would continue to sell blank discs and offer repair services, MD Data, a version for storing computer data, was announced by Sony in 1993 but never gained significant ground. Its media were incompatible with standard audio MiniDiscs, which has been cited as one of the reasons behind the formats failure. MD Data could not write to audio-MDs, only the more expensive data blanks. In 1997, MD-Data2 blanks were introduced, which held 650 MB of data and they were only implemented in Sonys short-lived MD-based camcorder as well as a small number of multi-track recorders, Sonys MDM-X4, Tascams 564, and Yamahas MD-8, MD-4, & MD4S
3.
Sharp Corporation
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Sharp Corporation is a Japanese multinational corporation that designs and manufactures electronic products, headquartered in Sakai-ku, Sakai. Since 2016 it has been a part of Taiwan-based Foxconn Group. Sharp employs more than 50,000 people worldwide, the company was founded in September 1912 in Tokyo and takes its name from one of its founder’s first inventions, the Ever-Sharp mechanical pencil, which was invented by Tokuji Hayakawa in 1915. As of 2013, Sharp Corporation is the tenth-largest, by market share, in Japan it has been a long-time leader. Sharp has at times also been the most popular mobile phone brand in the Japanese market, in 1912, Tokuji Hayakawa founded a metal workshop in Tokyo. The first of his inventions was a snap buckle named ‘Tokubijo’. Another of his inventions was the Ever-Sharp mechanical pencil in 1915, after the pencil business was destroyed by the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, the company relocated to Osaka and began designing the first generation of Japanese radio sets. These went on sale in 1925, in 1953, Sharp started producing TV sets. In 1964, Sharp developed the world’s first transistor calculator, which was priced at JP¥535,000 and it took Sharp several years to develop the product as they had no experience in making computing devices at the time. Two years later, in 1966, Sharp introduced its first IC calculator using 145 Mitsubishi-made bipolar ICs and its first LSI calculator was introduced in 1969. This was the first pocketable calculator priced at less than JP¥100,000, the company produced the first LCD calculator in 1973. All of these units are considered collectors items on the secondary market, one of the company’s main inventors of LCD calculators was Tadashi Sasaki. The company ventured into the high end stereo market in 1976 with the introduction of high end receivers, amplifiers, speakers, turntables and cassette players. The Optonica line as it was called, consisted of quality and technically advanced components. The line was changed, in 1981, and moved mainly into digital high end. Sharp’s Mobile Communications Division created the world’s first commercial camera phone, since 2000, Sharp has heavily invested in LCD panel manufacturing plants, Kameyama in 2004, Sakai in 2009. The Sakai plant is still the only 10th generation LCD manufacturing plant on the globe, however, the 2008 financial crisis and strong Yen significantly lowered world demand for Japanese LCD panels. Furthermore, the switch to digital TV broadcasting was completed in Japan by the middle of 2011
4.
Panasonic
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Panasonic Corporation, formerly known as Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. is a Japanese multinational electronics corporation headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka, Japan. The company was founded in 1918 and has grown to one of the largest Japanese electronics producers alongside Sony, Hitachi, Toshiba. In addition to electronics, it offers non-electronic products and services such as home renovation services, Panasonic is the worlds fourth-largest television manufacturer by 2012 market share. Panasonic has a listing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the Nikkei 225. It has a listing on the Nagoya Stock Exchange. From 1935 to October 1,2008, the name was Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. On January 10,2008, the announced that it would change its name to Panasonic Corporation, in effect on October 1,2008. The name change was approved at a meeting on June 26,2008 after consultation with the Matsushita family. Panasonic was founded in 1918 by Kōnosuke Matsushita as a vendor of duplex lamp sockets, in 1927, it began producing bicycle lamps, the first product which it marketed under the brand name National. After the war, Panasonic regrouped as a Keiretsu and began to supply the boom in Japan with radios and appliances. Matsushitas brother-in-law, Toshio Iue, founded Sanyo as a subcontractor for components after World War II, Sanyo grew to become a competitor to Panasonic, but was later acquired by Panasonic in December 2009. In 1961, Konosuke Matsushita traveled to the United States and met with American dealers, the company began producing television sets for the U. S. market under the Panasonic brand name, and expanded the use of the brand to Europe in 1979. The company used the National brand outside of North America from the 1950s to the 1970s, the company also developed a line of home appliances such as rice cookers for the Japanese and Asian markets. Rapid growth resulted in the company opening manufacturing plants around the world, the company debuted a hi-fidelity audio speaker in Japan in 1965 with the brand Technics. This line of high quality stereo components became worldwide favorites, the most famous products being its turntables, such as the SL-1200 record player, known for its high performance, precision and durability. In 1973, Matsushita formed a joint venture with Anam Group, in 1983, Matsushita launched the Panasonic Senior Partner, the first fully IBM PC compatible Japanese-made computer. In November 1990, Matsushita agreed to acquire the American media company MCA Inc. for US$6.59 billion, Matsushita subsequently sold 80% of MCA to Seagram Company for US$7 billion in April 1995. In 1998, Matsushita sold Anam National to Anam Electronics, on May 2,2002, Panasonic Canada marked its 35th anniversary in that country by giving $5-million to help build a music city on Torontos waterfront
5.
Integrated circuit
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An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece of semiconductor material, normally silicon. The ICs mass production capability, reliability and building-block approach to circuit design ensured the rapid adoption of standardized ICs in place of using discrete transistors. ICs are now used in all electronic equipment and have revolutionized the world of electronics. Computers, mobile phones, and other home appliances are now inextricable parts of the structure of modern societies, made possible by the small size. These advances, roughly following Moores law, allow a computer chip of 2016 to have millions of times the capacity, ICs have two main advantages over discrete circuits, cost and performance. Cost is low because the chips, with all their components, are printed as a unit by photolithography rather than being constructed one transistor at a time, furthermore, packaged ICs use much less material than discrete circuits. Performance is high because the ICs components switch quickly and consume little power because of their small size, the main disadvantage of ICs is the high cost to design them and fabricate the required photomasks. This high initial cost means ICs are only practical when high production volumes are anticipated, Circuits meeting this definition can be constructed using many different technologies, including thin-film transistor, thick film technology, or hybrid integrated circuit. However, in general usage integrated circuit has come to refer to the single-piece circuit construction originally known as a integrated circuit. Jacobi disclosed small and cheap hearing aids as typical industrial applications of his patent, an immediate commercial use of his patent has not been reported. The idea of the circuit was conceived by Geoffrey Dummer. Dummer presented the idea to the public at the Symposium on Progress in Quality Electronic Components in Washington and he gave many symposia publicly to propagate his ideas, and unsuccessfully attempted to build such a circuit in 1956. A precursor idea to the IC was to create small ceramic squares, Components could then be integrated and wired into a bidimensional or tridimensional compact grid. This idea, which seemed very promising in 1957, was proposed to the US Army by Jack Kilby, however, as the project was gaining momentum, Kilby came up with a new, revolutionary design, the IC. In his patent application of 6 February 1959, Kilby described his new device as a body of semiconductor material … wherein all the components of the circuit are completely integrated. The first customer for the new invention was the US Air Force, Kilby won the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit. His work was named an IEEE Milestone in 2009, half a year after Kilby, Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor developed his own idea of an integrated circuit that solved many practical problems Kilbys had not. Noyces design was made of silicon, whereas Kilbys chip was made of germanium, Noyce credited Kurt Lehovec of Sprague Electric for the principle of p–n junction isolation, a key concept behind the IC
6.
Walkman
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Walkman is a Sony brand tradename originally used for portable audio cassette/tape players in the late 1970s. In the 2010s, it was used to market Sonys portable audio, the original Walkman actually introduced a change in music listening habits by allowing people to carry recorded music with them and listen to music through lightweight headphones. Owners of the Walkman were able to back their lost time, commuting for example. It was the privatization and personalization offered by the Walkman that led to its success, the prototype was built in 1978 by audio-division engineer Nobutoshi Kihara for Sony co-founder Masaru Ibuka. Ibuka wanted to be able to listen to operas during his frequent trans-Pacific plane trips, the original idea for a portable stereo is credited to Brazilian-German inventor Andreas Pavel. The first Walkman was marketed in 1979 in Japan, using the name Walkman, from 1980, it was known as the Soundabout in many other countries including the US, Freestyle in Sweden, and the Stowaway in the UK. Advertising, despite all the languages, still attracted thousands of buyers in the US specifically. The names Walkman, Pressman, Watchman, Scoopman, Discman, and Talkman are trademarks of Sony, the name Walkman was based on its precursor, the Pressman tape recorder. An initial prototype of the Walkman was in fact made by replacing the monophonic recording circuit, head and speaker from the Pressman with a stereo playback-only head and amplifier. Sony continues to use the Walkman brand name for most of their portable audio devices, the marketing of the Walkman introduced the idea of Japanese-ness into global culture, synonymous with miniaturization and high-technology. The Walk-men and Walk-women in advertisements were created to be the ideal reflections of the subject watching, the advertising of the Sony Walkman served to portray it as a possession that was not only fashionable but culturally definitive. Owning one proved the owner was up to date and financially able to buy newly marketed commercial products, rather than waiting for them to become established and it became one of the most successful launches of any new product in the past half-century. A major component of the Walkman advertising campaign was personalization of the device, prior to the Walkman, the common device for portable music was the portable radio, which could only offer listeners standard music broadcasts. Having the ability to customize a playlist was a new and exciting revolution in music technology, potential buyers had the opportunity to choose their perfect match in terms of mobile listening technology. The ability to play your own music and listen privately was a selling point of the Walkman, especially amongst teens. Despite all this technological diversity, there must be one which is the choice for you. Sony accomplished the feat of mass individualized and targeted advertisement. Today, Walkman still maintains its role in culture, albeit a diminished one due to the large number of competitors in mobile audio devices today
7.
Sony Mobile
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Sony Mobile is a multinational telecommunications company founded on October 1,2001 as a joint venture between Sony and Ericsson, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan and wholly owned by Sony. It was originally incorporated as Sony Ericsson, but Sony acquired Ericssons share in the venture on February 16,2012, Sony Mobile Communications has research and development facilities in Kenya, Africa, Chennai, India, Lund, Sweden, Beijing, China and Silicon Valley, USA. Sony Mobile was the fourth-largest smartphone manufacturer by market share in the quarter of 2012 with 9.8 million units shipped. In the United States, Ericsson partnered with General Electric in the nineties as Ericsson Mobile Communications, primarily to establish a US presence. Ericsson had decided to obtain chips for its phones from a single source—a Philips facility in New Mexico, on March 17,2000, a fire at the Philips factory contaminated the sterile facility. Philips assured Ericsson and Nokia that production would be delayed for no more than a week, when it became clear that production would actually be compromised for months, Ericsson was faced with a serious shortage. Nokia had already begun to obtain parts from alternative sources, but Ericssons position was much worse as production of current models and the launch of new ones was held up. Ericsson, which had been in the phone market for decades. This was mainly due to fire and its inability to produce cheaper phones like Nokia. To curtail the losses, it considered outsourcing production to Asian companies that could produce the handsets for lower costs, speculation began about a possible sale by Ericsson of its mobile phone division, but the companys president, Kurt Hellström, said it had no plans to do so. Hellström said, Mobile phones are really a core business for Ericsson and we wouldnt be as successful if we didnt have phones. Sony was a player in the worldwide mobile phone market with a share of less than 1 percent in 2000. By August 2001, the two companies had finalised the terms of the merger announced in April, Ericsson contributed a majority of the Ericsson Mobile Communications company, excluding a minor part spun off as Ericsson Mobile Platforms. Sony contributed its entire handset division, the company was to have an initial workforce of 3,500 employees. To this end, it released new models which had built-in digital camera. The joint venture continued to make losses in spite of booming sales. In 2007, the companys first 5-Megapixel camera phone, the Sony Ericsson K850i, was announced followed in 2008 by the Sony Ericsson C905, at Mobile World Congress 2009, Sony Ericsson unveiled the first 12-Megapixel phone, named Satio. In 2005, Sony Ericsson agreed to become the title sponsor for the WTA Tour in a deal worth $88 million US dollars over 6 years
8.
Stereophonic sound
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Stereophonic sound or, more commonly, stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that creates an illusion of multi-directional audible perspective. Thus the term applies to so-called quadraphonic and surround-sound systems as well as the more common two-channel. It is often contrasted with monophonic, or mono sound, where audio is heard as coming from one position, in the 2000s, stereo sound is common in entertainment systems such as broadcast radio and TV, recorded music and the cinema. The word stereophonic derives from the Greek στερεός, firm, solid + φωνή, sound, tone, voice and it was coined in 1927 by Western Electric, the signal is then reproduced over multiple loudspeakers to recreate, as closely as possible, the live sound. Secondly artificial or pan-pot stereo, in which a sound is reproduced over multiple loudspeakers. By varying the amplitude of the signal sent to each speaker an artificial direction can be suggested. The control which is used to vary this relative amplitude of the signal is known as a pan-pot, by combining multiple pan-potted mono signals together, a complete, yet entirely artificial, sound field can be created. In technical usage, true stereo sound recording and sound reproduction that uses stereographic projection to encode the relative positions of objects and events recorded. During two-channel stereo recording, two microphones are placed in strategically chosen locations relative to the source, with both recording simultaneously. The two recorded channels will be similar, but each will have distinct time-of-arrival and sound-pressure-level information, during playback, the listeners brain uses those subtle differences in timing and sound level to triangulate the positions of the recorded objects. Stereo recordings often cannot be played on systems without a significant loss of fidelity. This phenomenon is known as phase cancellation and this two-channel telephonic process was commercialized in France from 1890 to 1932 as the Théâtrophone, and in England from 1895 to 1925 as the Electrophone. Both were services available by coin-operated receivers at hotels and cafés, modern stereophonic technology was invented in the 1930s by British engineer Alan Blumlein at EMI, who patented stereo records, stereo films, and also surround sound. In early 1931, Blumlein and his wife were at a local cinema, Blumlein declared to his wife that he had found a way to make the sound follow the actor across the screen. The genesis of ideas is uncertain, but he explained them to Isaac Shoenberg in the late summer of 1931. His earliest notes on the subject are dated 25 September 1931, the application was dated 14 December 1931, and was accepted on 14 June 1933 as UK patent number 394,325. The patent covered many ideas in stereo, some of which are used today and these discs used the two walls of the groove at right angles in order to carry the two channels. Much of the development work on this system for cinematic use did not reach completion until 1935, in Blumleins short test films, his original intent of having the sound follow the actor was fully realised
9.
ARM architecture
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ARM, originally Acorn RISC Machine, later Advanced RISC Machine, is a family of reduced instruction set computing architectures for computer processors, configured for various environments. It also designs cores that implement this instruction set and licenses these designs to a number of companies that incorporate those core designs into their own products, a RISC-based computer design approach means processors require fewer transistors than typical complex instruction set computing x86 processors in most personal computers. This approach reduces costs, heat and power use and these characteristics are desirable for light, portable, battery-powered devices—including smartphones, laptops and tablet computers, and other embedded systems. For supercomputers, which large amounts of electricity, ARM could also be a power-efficient solution. ARM Holdings periodically releases updates to architectures and core designs, some older cores can also provide hardware execution of Java bytecodes. The ARMv8-A architecture, announced in October 2011, adds support for a 64-bit address space, with over 100 billion ARM processors produced as of 2017, ARM is the most widely used instruction set architecture in terms of quantity produced. Currently, the widely used Cortex cores, older classic cores, the British computer manufacturer Acorn Computers first developed the Acorn RISC Machine architecture in the 1980s to use in its personal computers. Its first ARM-based products were coprocessor modules for the BBC Micro series of computers, according to Sophie Wilson, all the tested processors at that time performed about the same, with about a 4 Mbit/second bandwidth. After testing all available processors and finding them lacking, Acorn decided it needed a new architecture, inspired by white papers on the Berkeley RISC project, Acorn considered designing its own processor. Wilson developed the set, writing a simulation of the processor in BBC BASIC that ran on a BBC Micro with a 6502 second processor. This convinced Acorn engineers they were on the right track, Wilson approached Acorns CEO, Hermann Hauser, and requested more resources. Hauser gave his approval and assembled a team to implement Wilsons model in hardware. The official Acorn RISC Machine project started in October 1983 and they chose VLSI Technology as the silicon partner, as they were a source of ROMs and custom chips for Acorn. Wilson and Furber led the design and they implemented it with a similar efficiency ethos as the 6502. A key design goal was achieving low-latency input/output handling like the 6502, the 6502s memory access architecture had let developers produce fast machines without costly direct memory access hardware. The first samples of ARM silicon worked properly when first received and tested on 26 April 1985, Wilson subsequently rewrote BBC BASIC in ARM assembly language. The in-depth knowledge gained from designing the instruction set enabled the code to be very dense, the original aim of a principally ARM-based computer was achieved in 1987 with the release of the Acorn Archimedes. In 1992, Acorn once more won the Queens Award for Technology for the ARM, the ARM2 featured a 32-bit data bus, 26-bit address space and 27 32-bit registers
10.
PlayStation 3
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The PlayStation 3 is a home video game console developed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It is the successor to PlayStation 2, and is part of the PlayStation brand of consoles and it was first released on November 11,2006, in Japan, November 17,2006, in North America, and March 23,2007, in Europe and Australia. The PlayStation 3 mainly competes against consoles such as Microsofts Xbox 360, the console was first officially announced at E32005, and was released at the end of 2006. It was the first console to use Blu-ray Disc as its storage medium. In September 2009, the Slim model of the PlayStation 3 was released and it no longer provided the hardware ability to run PS2 games. It was lighter and thinner than the version, and featured a redesigned logo and marketing design. A Super Slim variation was released in late 2012, further refining and redesigning the console. The system had a start in the market but managed to recover. As of March 2016, PlayStation 3 has sold 85 million units worldwide, putting it about on par with Xbox 360 and its successor, the PlayStation 4, was released later in November 2013. On September 29,2015, Sony confirmed that sales of the PlayStation 3 were to be discontinued in New Zealand, in March 2017, the official site for PlayStation 3 in Japan was updated to state that it would be discontinued soon. Sony officially unveiled PlayStation 3 to the public on May 16,2005, at E32005, Video footage based on the predicted PlayStation 3 specifications was also shown. Two hardware configurations were also announced for the console, a 20 GB model, the 60 GB model was to be the only configuration to feature an HDMI port, Wi-Fi internet, flash card readers and a chrome trim with the logo in silver. Both models were announced for a worldwide release, November 11,2006, for Japan and November 17,2006, for North America. On September 6,2006, Sony announced that PAL region PlayStation 3 launch would be delayed until March 2007, because of a shortage of materials used in the Blu-ray drive. Also, the price of the Japanese 20 GB model was reduced by over 20%. During the event, Sony showed 27 playable PS3 games running on final hardware, PlayStation 3 was first released in Japan on November 11,2006, at 07,00. According to Media Create,81,639 PS3 systems were sold within 24 hours of its introduction in Japan, soon after its release in Japan, PS3 was released in North America on November 17,2006. Reports of violence surrounded the release of PS3, a customer was shot, campers were robbed at gunpoint, customers were shot in a drive-by shooting with BB guns, and 60 campers fought over 10 systems
