36 Fun Facts About Sony

Which two men founded the company that became Sony in 1946?

Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita reconnected after the war when Morita saw a newspaper article about Ibuka's new radio business in Tokyo.

What did Sony's original Japanese company name mean in English?

Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation's first attempt at a home product was a crude electric rice cooker made of electrodes in a wooden tub.

Which product was the Type-G, made by the company that became Sony?

Japan's earliest tape recorder, the Type-G, came only after the company worked out how to make its own magnetic recording tape.

Why did the founders reject the initials TTK as a brand name?

A railway firm used similar initials, and Americans stumbled over the nickname 'Totsuko', so the founders set out to find a short, easy brand name.

With which company did Sony run a mobile-phone joint venture from 2001 until buying it out in 2012?

Ericsson and Sony's phone venture was the world's fourth-largest phone maker in 2007, but it lost ground as smartphones like Apple's iPhone took over.

The PlayStation controller's action buttons show a triangle, a circle, a cross and which other shape?

A square, designer Teiyu Goto said, stands for a sheet of paper, meaning menus or documents, while the triangle stands for a viewpoint.

Which Marvel superhero's film rights has Sony Pictures long controlled, forcing Marvel to strike a deal to use him?

Spider-Man's film rights stayed with Sony Pictures, yet a 2015 deal let Marvel Studios put him in Captain America: Civil War without paying Sony a fee.

Which Sony gadget, launched in 1979, was first sold in the United States as the Soundabout?

The Walkman was sold as the Soundabout in the US at first, but its Japanese-coined English name caught on worldwide by the early 1980s.

Sony's proprietary colour television technology, patented until 1996, was called what?

Triluminos followed in 2004 in the world's first LED-backlit LCD TVs.

Sony's U-matic was among the first of which kind of format?

U-matic was among the first videocassette formats, but it never became a household item and instead helped TV news switch from film to video.

Sony's Betamax lost the home-video format war to VHS, developed by which company?

JVC's VHS arrived a year after Betamax yet became the market leader, though Sony kept selling Betamax tapes until 2016.

Sony launched its Handycam camcorders in 1985 alongside which tape format?

Video8's small cassettes made Sony's Handycam far smaller than VHS camcorders.

The compact disc's 74-minute length is said to have been set so one disc could hold which symphony?

Beethoven's Ninth is the symphony in the story, but Kees Immink, an engineer who helped develop the disc, suspects the tale is a myth.

Which recordable format did Sony launch in 1992 as a successor to the cassette?

MiniDisc never managed to replace the cassette worldwide, then lost out to MP3 players, and Sony sold its last MiniDisc players in 2013.

Which flash card format did Sony create for its own cameras and devices?

Memory Stick was Sony's own card format, but around 2010 Sony gave in and began adding SD card slots to its devices.

Blu-ray beat which rival disc format in a war that ended in 2008?

HD DVD's champion Toshiba gave up in February 2008, handing Blu-ray the high-definition format war.

Sony's contactless IC card technology, used for payments and transit, is called what?

FeliCa lets riders tap phones at Japan's ticket gates: Apple enabled it on iPhone 7 models sold in Japan, then on iPhones sold worldwide from the iPhone 8.

Which Nintendo console did Sony supply the sound chip for?

Sony designed the Super Famicom's sound chips and was building a CD add-on for Nintendo, until Nintendo dropped the partnership at the last minute.

Which company did Nintendo choose over Sony for its CD-ROM add-on, a day after Sony's 1991 reveal?

Philips won the deal a day after Sony had proudly shown off its Play Station prototype, and the snub pushed Sony to build a console of its own.

Who is the Sony engineer credited with developing the PlayStation?

Ken Kutaragi, known as the father of the PlayStation, led Sony into consoles after Nintendo abandoned their joint CD project.

Which Sony game series stars Kratos?

God of War's 2018 game moved Kratos from Greek myth to the Norse gods, recasting him as a father travelling with his young son.

As of 2026, which is Sony's best-selling console?

PlayStation 2 was still being made at the end of 2012, more than six years after its successor, the PlayStation 3, went on sale.

Which optical format did Sony create for the PlayStation Portable?

Universal Media Disc carried games and films for the PSP, but UMD movies sold so poorly that studios soon cut back their releases.

Sony's virtual reality headset for PS4 was originally revealed in 2014 under what code name?

Project Morpheus grew out of years of Sony prototypes that paired personal video viewers with PlayStation Move controllers.

Which music company did Sony take over for about $2 billion in the late 1980s?

CBS Records became the core of Sony Music Entertainment, part of a push into content that many at the time thought a mistake.

Which Hollywood studio did Sony buy in 1989 for $3.4 billion?

Columbia Pictures cost Sony $3.4 billion in 1989, a purchase criticised at the time as unwise and costly.

Which Sony president championed the compact disc and backed its move into video games?

Norio Ohga had hoped to become an opera singer, and Sony's founders recruited him for his knowledge of sound.

Who became the first foreigner to run a major Japanese electronics firm when he took over Sony in 2005?

He backed hits like Spider-Man, cut 9,000 jobs and complained of business 'silos'.

Kazuo Hirai's 2012 turnaround plan was known by what name?

One Sony was Kazuo Hirai's drive to end years of losses, and he is credited with leading Sony's turnaround before retiring in 2019.

Which PC brand did Sony sell off in 2014?

Vaio was sold off because its PCs were selling poorly, as Sony restructured to focus on mobile devices.

The 2014 hack of Sony Pictures came weeks before the release of which film?

The Interview drew hacker threats against cinemas, and the FBI reached out to theatres that went on to screen it.

Sony's 1995 music-publishing merger was with a catalogue owned by which star?

Michael Jackson had famously outbid Paul McCartney for the Beatles songs in the 1980s, and his estate sold its share to Sony in 2016.

Which anime streaming service is co-owned by Sony's Aniplex and Sony Pictures?

Crunchyroll cost Sony $1.175 billion in a deal with AT&T agreed in 2020, and in 2022 Sony folded its own Funimation service into it.

What kind of animal was Sony's AIBO robot?

A dog was Aibo's shape, and after Sony stopped selling the robot, a new Aibo went on sale in Japan in 2018.

With which carmaker did Sony form an electric vehicle joint venture in 2022?

Honda and Sony revealed their Afeela brand at CES 2023, but in 2026 the venture cancelled the Afeela 1 sedan and its planned SUV.

Under what brand did Sony unveil a camera-carrying drone at CES 2021?

Airpeak was billed as the smallest drone able to carry a Sony Alpha camera, yet in 2024 Sony announced it would stop selling its Airpeak S1.