Sony

As for manufacturing electronic products for the consumer markets, Sony is not only a pioneer, it’s also a leader in this domains so no surprise to know that it was ranked 105th list of Fortune Global in 2017.  In comparison from humble beginnings coupled with longevity Sony has become massive with numerous businesses towards Global consumers and professional markets including entertainment, electronics, gaming and others.

American teenagers started buying these walkmans of that era in the millions.  This helped push Sony to international status as a big player when it came to electronics manufacturing. By the end of 1968 Sony had shifted out over 4.5 million units.

When the first players surfaced it attracted widespread usage in Japan and Europe and of course every body knows about the Sony PlayStation in the early 1990s.

Sony has been directly and solely responsible for introducing many of the most popular recording formats of our time, including the Compact Disc, floppy disk and the Blu-ray Disc.  In other words Sony created standards for new recording and storage technologies for the consumer and business sectors globally.

Looking at audio recording, now this can be agued as Sonys most iconic electronic product of all time, in the form of the world’s first portable music player using the compact cassette  format.  Released in 1979 they called it “the Walkman ” and then Sony  introduced the MiniDisc format in 1992.

Sony are the ones who truly made music not just personal but in addition portable as well.  This was a fundamental transformation in music listening activities, by letting people to be mobile while listening to music through lightweight headphones, anywhere and anytime. 

Sony leading from the front again reinvented the industry standard Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound format system, with a new system using eight channels (7.1) of audio creating two extra channels, compared to just six utilised by Dolby Digital 5.1 at the time in 1993.

Flash memory

In 1998 Sony come out with their memory  flash memory cards and Memory Stick format for use in Sony products such as cameras and portable music players and memory cards for their “Xperia” SmartPhones. 

Sony developed a robot that played digital music called Rolly, it’s shaped like an egg.

It more than just delivered music but with robotic dancing to the music it played as well. 

It has wings shaped like cups (that could pass for arms) that open and close, it can rotate and spine with the aid of two wheels, and for aesthetics it has two bands of LED colored lights running around its edge, all these features can all move to the music coming out of Rolly.

In mid 1998 Sony announced a prototype robot which they called AIBO that is actually a series of robot pets manufactured and designed by Sony.

The good news is that Sony is bringing back the iconic robot pet dog brand with a new model after more than ten years away. And they are calling it (you guessed it) “Aibo” model number ERS-1000 (probably got this from the T-1000 of the terminator 2 franchise). Sony claims the new Aibo programmed to bond with owners by providing them lots of love.

And as for QRIO it stood at approximately 0.6 m tall and 7.3kg in weight. QRIO was built to make people happy and that was backed up by its slogan that’s was “Makes life fun, Sony developed and marketed this bipedal humanoid entertainment robot to follow up on the success of its AIBO entertainment robot.

Computing

Sony did produce computers, and then left the computer business around 1990, and then entered again in 1996 under the brand name of VAIO which stood for “Video Audio Integrated Operation”. 

However in February 2014 left the computer business yet again because of poor sales, VAIO was sold to Japan Industrial Partners, but Sony has a minority stake in JIP.

Sony Interactive Entertainment

The second most iconic electronic product released under Sony’s “Interactive Entertainment” sector, has to be the PlayStation game consoles, released in 1994 was the first PlayStation.  And then the PlayStation 2 had more than  60% of world console sales, breaking Nintendo’s long-standing record as the games console market King, suffice to say that Sony’s PlayStation 2 is truly the best-selling video game console of all time, selling over 150 million units as of 2011.

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The Original PlayStation – 1994

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And then Sony came out with a High-Definition games console with the PlayStation 3 in 2006 and the Station 3 had a Blu-ray format, the first games console to have this.

Sony has sold more than 35.9 million units of the Sony PlayStation 4 launched on 15 November 2013.

Also produced well known television game shows like Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. 

They have done so well with this venture that they were ranked third among film studios in 2011, as a result of group sales in 2010 of $7.2 billion.

Sony Pictures

Did you know that Sony has produced many memorable movies?  Like Blade Runner 2049, Spider-Man, Resident Evil, The Karate Kid, Ghostbusters and Men in Black just to name a very few.

Sony
made all this happen when it started Film and television production
when it bought and took-over Columbia Pictures Entertainment in 1989 for
a cool $3.4 billion.

Sony Music Entertainment

In one of its largest-ever acquisitions, Sony purchased CBS Record Group in 1988 for US$2 billion.

Sony Music Entertainment in
1991, become the new name for CBS Records.

Sony Music Entertainment (also known as SME or Sony Music) is the second-largest global recorded music company of the “big three” record companies and is controlled by Sony Corporation of America, the United States subsidiary of Japan’s Sony.

The company owns full or partial rights to the catalogues of Michael Jackson, The Beatles, Usher, Eminem, Akon and others.

The brand Xperia is not only sheared by Sony’s SmartPhones but also by the their tablet computers as well, the company launched its Sony Tablet line of Android tablets in 2011. 

The company started marketing their Android Tablet products in 2012.

Sony Mobile Communications

In Terms of Mobile phones for Sony, it all began when Sony and Ericsson the Swedish telecommunications company, came together to create Sony Ericsson in 2001.  

However at present we can say Sony Mobile Communications a subsidiary of Sony Corporation, is a mobile phone manufacturing company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.

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Sony Ericsson were innovative in their time, with multimedia-capable mobile phones that were unique for the time with first-time-ever-seen features such as cameras. Sales were slow at first, however, SMC reached a profit in 2003.  Despite their innovations, Sony faced intense competition from a new sheriff in town, a new player who went by name Apple who released the iPhone in 2007.

Of the 5 largest, mobile phone manufacturers, Sony was fourth in the world In 2009 amid a global recession. The big buyout of Ericsson’s share in the company by Sony took in 2012, it was sold for $1 billion USD.

Sony released the Xperia Z5 Premium in 2015 in Europe, Canada and USA.

Sony Mobile Communications at the moment now only focuses under the Xperia name, on the smartphone market, in response to Sony’s market share fallen to six place IN 2010.  Regardless Sony still posted sales of 37 million mobile phones in the year 2013, that represents two percent of the mobile phone market.

Obviously
starting with Sony’s top phones, as we would expect that, every major Mobile Phone
manufacturer wants to be the “top dog” they do this by releasing “flagship” SmartPhones
exhibiting the best hardware and software specifications coupled with improved
user modifications that they have to offer. 

Sony’s
agreement with Ericcson built so many bridges between them, it lasted for a
long time indeed, and before then Sony where just Sony and branded their
SmartPhones as just
Sony,  And then Sony dropped their first flagship mainstream
Android device  from Sony Ericsson.  They called it Xperia X10, announced in November 2009
and released four months later.

The X10 some
sort of a classic, as the operating system was updated twice by popular demand
by users to Android 2.3 Gingerbread, the X10 has got quite a few “unofficial
updates” with the help off the FreeXperia Project now known as FXP who are
basically a team of Developers.  It was
sleek and looked well sophisticated, a sign of things to come from Sony, a
totally new, unique user experience.

The Sony
Ericsson Xperia Arc succeeded the X10 released in March 2011. The Arc had many similarities
with the X10, for instance, the
resolution of the 4.2”screen was the same,
and as for the CPU, Qualcomm chip was in reality, just slightly updated, with 1 GB of internal storage and
512 RAM.  The first we heard of Best Resolution Audio
Visual Integrated Architecture (BRAVIA) engine was with the release of this
phone.

Xperia
Arc was released with Android 2.3 Gingerbread, and subsequently upgradeable to Android
4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Right before the announcement, the Xperia Arc had been

This was
shaky times for Sony and Ericsson, terms of  their association together.  In meantime while the Xperia Arc was released
with Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS but could be upgraded to Android 4.0 Ice Cream
Sandwich (sounds tasty :p), even right before the Xperia Arc was announced,
there was talk going round within the industry and elsewhere that it would be
called the Xperia X12, so much so that the designated numeration assigned to
previous models such as the Xperia X2 and X8 were dropped and in their place,
new names

They
thought more memorable, this outlook was not just these models but also for
future coming models.

And then Sony (Ericsson) announced the Arc S in
2011 that was basically a slightly upgraded version of the Xperia Arc.  Honestly, it was hard to even call the Arc S
a proper flagship Mobile Phone. 
Something had to give.

Meanwhile
Sony, finally dropped their highly anticipated first Android flagship
SmartPhone from Sony Mobile released
with the new name, behold the Sony Xperia S was born the beginning of a new
dynastic era of exceptional Sony SmartPhones as we know today.  The rest as they say is History, but on this
occasion phoneismobile is going to tell you the rest of the history not because
that’s just what we do, but because Sony is one of the very best, but we would put Sony on the
same level as Apple if not more.

Meanwhile
back then, in February, the release
date was announced at one of the biggest events (it’s sort of like the Olympics
for SmartPhones) the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is where Sony decided
to announce the release date for the Xperia S, note that this was..

…..there’s another big new player in
town, even the hardware
under the hood was impressive so much so that, for the first time in Sony’s
history, Sony’s flagship used a dual core Qualcomm MSM8260 Snapdragon CPU plus
in addition to this, as one would expect Sony being the kings and creators of
“PlayStation” included an improved and updated Adreno 220 responsible for
graphics and game performance.

The
Xperia S had no expandable options using microSD cards, but still never the
less Sony packed 32 gigs of internal storage and up to 1 GB of RAM, and a respectable
720P resolution screen. The S
was released with Android 2.3 which Sony officially updated to Android
4.1.2.

As we
said before, Sony knew ahead of time what direction they were going with the
Xperia S because as an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) the company had issues
updating not only its regular Mobiles, but also its most premium ones too. 

This
is where Sony went to town and released the hounds, and have come up with some
really amazing SmartPhones and the first was the Sony
Xperia Z,
the first SmartPhone from the Z Smart Group family, announced at CES 2013 and
released on 9 February, for starters and a big one as Mobile user have
been waiting for this one, Xperia Z was the first water-proof Android
flagship SmartPhone, suffice to say that it was a big hit. At last Sony
could now hone all its electronics skills into one handset without
restrictions.

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So in a
nutshell Sony cut their work out for themselves, set a new level for themselves
with the Xperia Z which was not just one of the most commercially successful
SmartPhones of early 2013 for Sony, but also in addition it took to the hearts
of Mobile User, in fact Sony attracted new Users to Sony Mobiles with the help
of the Xperia Z it was one of the most impressive phones, looked sleek,
sophisticated and worked as good as they looked.  The after-party  of the success of the Xperia Z was the
clone-like Xperia ZL,
which was the same device but without water and dust resistance, talk
about cashing in on success and rightfully so.

Sony Xperia Z1

And Sony Stayed
true to their word when they announced the Xperia Z1
on the 4th of September 2013. Once again Sony fully loaded
the Xperia Z1 with the very latest top hardware, with premium mobile building
materials coupled with top features a Mobile Phone had to offer from their
point of view.

 The device was also released in a smaller
variant, the Z1 Compact, which was “only” 4.3”.

The
Xperia Z2 was released in April 2014, Xperia Z2
codenamed Sirius. Like the Z1, the Xperia Z2 was water and dust
proof possessing an IP standard of IP55 and IP58. The Z2 wasn’t an massive improvement over the Z1, though
battery life was slightly better, but the ability to record 4K videos was a big
hit with the fan base and for those who take SmartPhones as their main source
of visual entertainment.

The
phone features a new display (measuring a whopping 0.2″ bigger than the Z1)

 A Snapdragon 801 CPU, Sony used the newest Adreno
330

3
GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal storage expandable with SD card

OK
folks this one was somewhat weird, why?  
Instead of calling, Sony’s Xperia Z3’s successor the Xperia Z4, they
did not call it that at all (but only in Japan was it called the Xp Z4), so everywhere
else in the world the phone was named as the Xperia Z3+, maybe Sony thought they had unfinished
business with the Z3 for some reason.

The
Xperia Z3+ was
premium hard, software and great feature galore, is also

made
out of metal and glass, just like its predecessors,

and
it features a 5.2-inch fullHD display.

The
phone includes 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage,

while
it is fueled by the
Snapdragon 810
processor from Qualcomm.

The
device is IP68 certified for water and dust resistance,

while
a 2,930mAh battery is included on the inside.

Suffice
to say that this left Mobile Phone Users perplexed yet curious as to why Sony
did that.  Meanwhile, as by now and it was expected that the
Xperia Z3+ would look quite similar to the Xperia XZ3, so much so that even the
dimensions were almost identical, with the same display it had the same width
and height as its predecessor.

This time
Sony announced not just two SmartPhones, but three new flagship handsets, all
made to a very high standard which was now a prerequisite from Sony by Users.  It was in September of 2015 that the three
devices were announced, they were the Xperia Z5 and two variants which were the
Xperia Z5 Compact and the Xperia Z5 Premium. 

All three Phone looked the same. 
Like the ones before, Sony kept with the flow by keeping the physical shutter
buttons on all of them, plus in addition they were all powered by the same
processor, the Snapdragon 810. 

All three devices included premium stereo
speakers shipped with Android 5.1.1 Lollipop OS out of the box.  Note that the Xperia Z5 and Z5 Premium got
updated to Android 7.1.1 Nougat, while the Xperia Z5 Compact
received Android 7.0 Nougat as its last update.

The Sony Xperia Z5

The
Sony
Xperia Z5 is
about the same size as the Xperia Z3+, while the design language did not change
much either. The phone

includes
a 5.2-inch fullHD display,

3GB
of RAM and 32GB of storage (expandable).

A
2,900mAh battery is included in the package, along with Quick Charge 2.0.

Sony Xperia X Performance

The
phone features a 5.2-inch fullHD display,

It
came with an IP68 certification for water and dust resistance.

The
Snapdragon 820 chip set fuels the
Xperia XZ,

An
Impressive camera package with a single 23-megapixel camera on the back. A
13-megapixel camera is included on the front side of the smartphone,

Android
6.0.1 Marshmallow came pre-installed on the handset.

Android
8.0 Oreo is the last update this phone received, and the device includes a
non-removable 2,900mAh battery, not to mention it supports Quick Charge 3.0
fast charging.

Again
Mobile Users and Xperia fans might have said the new Sony Xperia XZs is so
similar to its predecessor the XZ, as it sported the same display size and
resolution, heck, the same can be said for its design and dimensions.  The Xperia XZs was announced in February 2017.  even though the Xperia XZs was powered by the
same processor as the Xperia XZ, the differnrnce is that it was a much more
powerful smartphone, as Sony improved
major aspects for instance the new Sony Xperia XZs had more RAM than the Xperia
XZ, with…

….4GB
of RAM, and was announced in both 32GB and 64GB storage options.

19-megapixel
camera on the back, and a 13-megapixel cam on the front side.

The
Xperia XZs is IP68 certified for water and dust resistance,

with
a 2,900mAh battery with support for Quick
Charge 3.0,
same as the XpXZ

The
phone sports stereo speakers,

and
it ships with Android 7.1 Nougat.

The
last update was to Android 8.0 Oreo.

With
the Sony Xperia XZ1 features a 5.2-inch full HD display,

4GB
of RAM and 64GB of storage.

While
the Xperia XZ1 Compact featured a smaller

4.6-inch
HD display,

along with 4GB of RAM and
32GB of storage.

Both Smartphones
showed-off a 19-megapixel camera on the back, with 8-megapixel selfie camera is
on both handsets.  However it must be
noted that because Sony chose to have the same capacity for the battery in both
devices.

The company has not stood still in terms of
new designs in innovation, ergonomics and aesthetics.  Sony made a big move with the Xperia XZ2 series,
that move was a change in the design, feel and look for Sony featuring thinner
bezels than their predecessors the XZ1s, more or less taking their cue from
other Mobile manufacturers, they decided to curve them up quite a bit at the
edges and corners. In a nut shell less square and boxy like the previous Smartphones.

The Xperia XZ2 family
of devices came
with back-facing fingerprint scanners all powered by the Snapdragon 845,
however the Sony
Xperia XZ2 and XZ2
Premium are made out of premium glass and metal, while the Xperia XZ2 Compact came
with a plastic back. The Xperia XZ2 exhibited a 5.7-inch fullHD+ display screen,
while the Xperia XZ2 Compact came with a 5-inch fullHD+ panel, and as expected the
Xperia XZ2 Premium had a full blown flat screen going 4K display. 

The Sony Xperia 1
 was announced  in February 2019, and it
represented a new rebrand for Sony’s flagship series of smartphones, as it
marked the end of the Xperia XZ series of devices. The Sony Xperia 1 is made
out of metal and glass, it includes a side-facing fingerprint scanner, and it
is quite tall, and quite narrow at the same time, despite having a 6.5-inch
display. The reason for that lies in its display aspect ratio, the phone ships
with a display aspect ratio of 21:9, and is the very Sony-branded smartphone of
that kind in the market.