Works of the research group of new eyes large companies
The author | Ruan Xue
Edited | Sang Mingqiang
Few companies can leapfrog the 100-year cycle.
Globally, companies that have not faded in 50 years are very rare, and those that have been around for more than 80 years are even fewer. For example, Ali and Tencent, which we are familiar with, were established less than 30 years ago, and in the era of innovative economy, this thermal attenuation is more obvious. The protagonist we are going to talk about today is Sony (founded in 1945), which was once the top player of consumer electronics, but now it is gradually declining.
Sony started from the electronics manufacturing industry, and the founder Akio Morita once said, "The so-called creation of the market refers to the cultivation of the market." From 0 to 1, he brought Walkman and Trilong to Sony to shock the world's sales, and even influenced Jobs to a certain extent, creating epoch-making products such as iPhones and iMacs.
Before black technology has entered the public eye, Sony is already a representative of hardcore technology in the hearts of many post-80s. Time flies, when the last search for "Sony Dafa is good" is still stuck in 2016, Sony fans have to admit that Sony is really old, and it, like most established companies, slowly becomes a feeling stored in the memory of geeks.
The elderly Sony has not been exempt from the vulgarity: announcing the next car, throwing himself into the hottest track of the moment, and competing with young people.
Historical experience tells us that the veteran players who can keep the century-old foundation, behind their strategic development and transformation, are the amplification and extension of core capabilities. Sony's solution to choosing new energy vehicles is difficult not to think about whether we are experiencing the decline of a traditional electronic consumption era represented by Sony.
01
The Golden Age of Shallots
Sony, born of music, developed on an early trajectory like a sonata.
In 1945, Sony's predecessor, the Tokyo Communication Research Institute, was established, and the founder of Theo Inoue, who was a technology graduate, invited Shoo Morita to co-found the "Tokyo Communications Industry Co., Ltd." the year after its establishment, and since then, Morita and Sony have been bound together until the eve of the listing in 1958, when he changed the company name to SONY, which we are familiar with, taking the first step toward internationalization.
At the beginning of the establishment of Tokyo Communications Industry Co., Ltd., Inoue wrote a "Book of Fun Intentions", the first content of which was "to give full play to the skills of diligent and serious technicians to build an ideal factory that is free and open-minded, relaxed and happy", and he hoped to make this company a "paradise for engineers", which became the main tone of Sony's later technology as king.
Similar to the start-ups of many tech companies, most of the five years after Sony's founding were silent: imaginative cask rice cookers that didn't become best-selling products, engineers who developed tape recorders in simple factories, long and repetitive experiments, and the consequent years of losses. This continued until 1950, when Sony introduced the first tape recorder, the G-type "tape" tape recorder, in Japan.
Sony tasted the sweetness, and the product line after that also expanded along the sound. Because it was too bulky, the early Sony tape recorder could only be used for the recording of formal occasions such as the court, and after several iterations, the H-type tape recorder began to become small, and Sony began to really enter the field of mass consumption, such as the transistor radio introduced in the fifties, which once triggered a boom in people listening to the radio.
Sony's golden age was the birth of countless world firsts: in 1965, the world's first generation of household tape recorders; in 1968, the world's first generation of single-gun three-beam color picture tube "Trilong" color television; in 1979, the world's first generation of stereoscopic Walkman"; in 1985, the first generation of video recorders.
Figure: Sony product development (Source: Sony official website, Guotai Junan Securities Research)
At that time, Sony was like the pocket of Doraemon, constantly producing some novelties. People living in that era slowly became accustomed to being shocked by Sony's new products: The Trilong TV pulled people out of the black-and-white display world and became synonymous with the best display effect.
At the other end of the ocean, the display screen seen in the domestic news network has also begun to carry Sony's logo. Sony's invention of the broadcast car recorded countless moments that made the Chinese people excited, whether it was the 2008 Olympic Games, or the 2009 military parade, sony's figure could be seen behind the CCTV camera. At that time, when Youku Tudou was still the top stream of the domestic video online platform, it was able to launch leading 4K technology, and it also had the credit of the first Sony 4K broadcast car in China.
Sony's real sweep of the domestic market should be the Walkman launched in the 80s.
The word has now been included in the Oxford Dictionary as the official English word for the Walkman. At that time, in order to open up sales channels for new products, Sony organized a unique advertising campaign: all the staff members carried Walkmans to play on the tram, enjoyed music, and hired a large number of students to walk in Japan's busiest commercial streets, listening and walking around. In those days, whoever owned a Sony Walkman was at the forefront of fashion.
02
Confused period of expansion
Sony in the 80s and 90s had the same goal as The Japanese manufacturing industry at that time: to surpass the United States and have its own world-leading position.
At that time, Japan became the world's second largest economy, and in the industrial market, Sony's audio and television began to penetrate into American households. But the good times did not last long, and the ensuing "Plaza Agreement" and the "Japan-U.S. Semiconductor Agreement" woke Japan up from the dream, and the agreement not only limited the sales price and market share of Japanese electronic products in the United States, but also required Japan to open 20% of the domestic market to American electronic products.
The export of electronics manufacturing industry represented by Sony was restricted, and a long period of confusion began.
Sony's first step out of the mud is to cultivate its own soft power and look for a second growth curve: If Sony in the sixties and seventies was a technological success, then sony in the 80s was officially smeared with entertainment.
In 1988, Sony acquired CBS Records, the largest broadcaster in the United States, and renamed CBS records, and the following year, Sony acquired Columbia Pictures under the American film industry in an open buy-in manner, although this acquisition once brought Sony the biggest loss in the company's history, but also laid the foundation for Sony to become the world's largest film and music company: a youthful memory of the post-90s - Jay Chou, is Sony's singer.
On the other hand, the emergence of the Nintendo Red and White Machine made Sony begin to realize that music and movies can no longer meet people's entertainment needs. So, in the same year of 1988, Sony began to cooperate with Nintendo, Sony was responsible for providing hardware services and jointly developing Nintendo's game consoles.
The cooperation did not exceed four years, Sony has the ability to develop game consoles, because of disagreement with Nintendo, the relationship broke down, followed by Sony in 1993 to establish Sony Computer Entertainment, planning to develop a new generation of game consoles, into the game market: PlayStation is Sony's first home video game entertainment platform launched in 1994, relying on the PS series, Sony and Nintendo, Microsoft three worlds.
Another financial business that underpinned Sony's profitability also began at this time, Life Insurance Company Limited (Sony Life) was established in August 1979. At a time when Sony was facing bankruptcy, the financial and insurance business was sony's second-largest profitable pillar besides the semiconductor business (camera CMOS), and until 2017, it also brought sony sales of nearly 303.2 billion yen.
Due to the diversification of the business, it was once difficult to define Sony.
Music enthusiasts think it is the highest representative of the audio and video effect, photography fans with Sony's SLR sigh well-made, game lovers in it and Nintendo difficult to choose, and a group of people will buy Samsung LCD TV players will lament the novel experience brought by the original Trilong, they witnessed the growth of Sony, but also for its later loneliness and lamentation.
03
Twilight of the gods
Time entered the 21st century, but Sony was left behind at the end of the 20th century.
In fact, not only Sony, But also Japan's traditional electronics manufacturing industry has suffered a huge impact in the 21st century, and Toshiba and Sharp, who once competed with Sony, could not escape the fate of being acquired.
Lacking revolutionary products, Sony began to show weakness in the ace electronics business, and the most recent product that made Sony's stock price soar 3 times was the PlayStation2 launched in 2000. Since then, Sony, although it is still iteratively updating its own product line, but the Walkman has been subverted by Apple's iPod, the TV business has been impacted by the flat PANEL TV, and Sony's Ericsson is not inferior to the iPhone, Samsung and other explosive mobile phones.
When the Japanese enterprises represented by technology manufacturing are difficult to afford high costs, technology costs are often passed on to consumers, product prices will be higher than other companies of the same type, so we can see that most of Sony's product prices are still the top level of similar products, once they give up investment in technology, they will lose the most important core competitiveness.
In such a dilemma, the fall of Japanese companies are not a minority, the impression of the new generation of people, Sony has even become a niche brand, survivors are looking for their own transformation exit, take the current car-making tide as an example: even the past bet on the hybrid Toyota has begun to turn to pure electric, Sony chose to launch its own pure electric SUV, can also be understood as the general trend of helplessness.
The voices about Sony's descent from the altar have been around since the early twentieth century, and Sony's market capitalization has fallen from $125 billion in 2000 to only $17 billion by the end of 2011.
Chart: Sony's historical stock price trend
Sony's voice reached a boiling point in 2013, the year Sony sold its U.S. headquarters building for $1.1 billion, losing $1.26 billion in the fiscal year. In the following time, Sony faced bankruptcy and became a cloud on the head, although Sony's products are still being updated and released, but the news of poor management is also constantly coming out: in 2014, Sony announced the sale of the PC business, and the loss expanded to 2.1 billion US dollars; in 2015, it closed 20 of the 31 directly operated stores in the United States; in the same year, the Japanese Sony Group laid off more than 1,500 employees.
At that time, Hirai Kazuo, who was regarded as the savior of Sony, was affectionately called "uncle", and fans bought Sony products from recharging faith to guarding the smile of their uncle. His proposed "One Sony" has re-agglomerated Sony's otherwise fragmented departments and announced that digital imaging, gaming and mobile have replaced electronic manufacturing as Sony's core business in the future, which also explains why the PS4 will become a turning point on Sony's self-help road.
When we try to look back at these "far-sighted" companies, we see that it was Sony who represented it forty years ago, apple that defined it twenty years ago, and now we talk about Tesla. As for sony's legacy, in addition to the layout of the early diversified business, there are also standards developed by its participation, which will also affect the current electronics manufacturing industry from time to time, and for consumers, there is still a group of consumers who will proudly show the value they once had for their faith.