3: History Sony

In september 1945, Masura Ibuka started a radio repair shop in Tokyo. The next year Akio Morita, his wartime research colleague joined him. On 7 may 1946 they founded a company called Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation (translated). This company produces the frist Japanees tape recorder, called the Type-G. In the early 1950s, Ibuka traveled to the United States. He was looking for a market for his tape recorder and heard about Bell Labs invention of the transistor. He got Bell to license the transistor technology to his company. The American companies Regency Electronics and Texas instruments built the first transistor radio, Ibuka's company made them commercially successful for the first time. 

In August 1955, His company released the Sony TR-55, this was Japan's first commercially produces transistor radio. That December they released the TR-72, it did very well in Canada, Australia, The Netherlands and Germany.  In the following years they produced many more succesful products like a portable transister, who were pupular under teens. . Sony also launched the world's first integrated circuit radio, the ICR-100 in 1967.  
Based on the succes of the American maket the company changed its name to Sony in 1958.  In 1968, Sony launched the colour television set, Trinitron. The Trinitron was the reason that Sony had been the world's largest TV manufacturer in terms of annual revenue until 2006. 

Sony created many inovative divices over the years. A compact cassette recorder, the Sony TC-50 was launched in 1969. NASA equipped every astronaut with this device from Apollo 7 onwards. The first commercial videocassette recorder. In 1973 Sony received the Emmy awart for developing the Trinitron. The Walkman, launched in 1997, the first stereo cassette player. 

1981 is considered as a starting point for Sony's digital revolution with launching the world's fist Compact Disc player, the Sony CDP-101. It also released a prototype of the world's first commercial electronic still camera in 1981. 
From 1991 when sony released the first commercial lithium-ion battery, it was the leader in the rechargeable battery industy until a massive defective battery scandal in 2006. 
In 1998 it created the first Memory Stick and a year before that the announcement of the SD card. Sadly this was a failure.