WHERE THEY CAME FROM
In the spirit of rebuilding postwar Japan with engineering know-how, Sony was founded in 1946 as Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering. In the early 1950s, it launched an era of consumer electronics development in Japan when it licensed transistor technology from Western Electric, AT&T’s former manufacturing arm. In 1958 the company gave itself a less unwieldy name: an amalgam of the Latin sonus, meaning “sound,” and the English sonny.

WHAT THEY DO
Sony designs and manufactures the Cybershot camera, the PlayStation game console, and Memory Sticks, which are mini-USB drives that allow digital files to be carried with spylike stealth. The Tokyo-based company has a knack for combining technological innovation with savvy marketing.

But Sony doesn’t just excel at making hardware. In the late 1980s the company began to aggressively acquire interests in the entertainment industries its products support. Sony Pictures Entertainment has since released many blockbusters, including the 2006 James Bond smash Casino Royale (in collaboration with MGM Studios); the division produces television hits such as Jeopardy and Days of Our Lives. Sony BMG Music Entertainment owns 21 record labels, whose rosters include such artists as Alicia Keys and Barry Manilow.

WHAT THEY GOT RIGHT
Sony’s Walkman was the iPod of its day. Introduced in 1979, the portable cassette player was the first device that let people listen to music whenever, wherever.

Sony came late to the videogame industry but caught up fast. Soon after PlayStation debuted in 1995, it bumped Nintendo from the No. 1 position, and more than 100 million units of its original console have since been sold. Each version of PlayStation has enticed consumers with supplemental home-entertainment features: The original played CDs, the second generation read DVDs, and the third contains a drive for Blu-ray discs, a high-definition DVD format seen as a possible replacement for DVDs. And despite manufacturing and supply problems with the launch of the PlayStation 3, Sony remains at the top of this industry.

Sony’s involvement in the development of the DVD was more a successful compromise than an outright success. In the early 1990s, while Sony and Philips were creating a form of compressed optical-disc storage known as the multimedia compact disc, or MMCD, Toshiba and others were working on its competition, the super density, or SD, disc. Afraid their product would be trounced as Sony’s Betamax was by VHS in the 1980s, Sony and Philips decided to back an SD disc that incorporated MMCD technology. The resulting product, the DVD, hit the market in 1996.

WHAT THEY GOT WRONG
In 1975, Sony introduced Betamax videocassettes and VCRs. But unlike Sony’s competitor JVC, which licensed its VHS technology to manufacturers, Sony insisted on keeping its technology proprietary, and the Betamax format tanked.

In 2006, Dell recalled 4.1 million laptop computers containing Sony-made batteries with defects that could cause the batteries to overheat and catch fire. Less than two weeks later, Apple recalled an additional 1.8 million Sony batteries. Although the recalls didn’t have a huge impact on Sony’s stock price, they did cost the company an estimated $420 million.

The release of Sony’s PlayStation 3 was criticized as a debacle. Scheduled to debut in spring 2006, the much-hyped new system didn’t hit shelves until November, and a shortage of components caused Sony to reduce its shipment targets. Nintendo, a major videogame rival, profited by introducing its new Wii console in November, selling twice as many of them as Sony did PlayStations that month.

WHAT’S NEXT
Sony has lost its edge, and Howard Stringer is determined to regain it.

Stringer, who in June 2005 became the first non-Japanese chairman and C.E.O. of Sony, has planned plant closures, job cuts, and the breaking down of barriers between Sony’s divisions to reenergize the company.

The long-term successes of PlayStation 3 and Blu-ray technology, which is competing for market dominance with Toshiba’s HD DVD, are likely to be used as gauges of Stringer’s achievement. Perhaps Sony live up to its motto and be “like no other” again. —Callen Bair