Slashdot Mirror
Sony founder Akio Morita dead at age 78
Winston Smith writes "Akio Morita, founder of Sony, died today at age 78. Morita defined the post-war Japanese electronics industry and his vision and influence played a major role in shaping our gadgetized world. He'll be missed. Here's the NYT obituary." (You already know the "registration required" drill.)
Filed at 1:27 p.m. EDT
By The Associated Press
TOKYO (AP) -- Politicians and business executives mourned the death of Sony Corp.
co-founder Akio Morita on Sunday, lauding the entrepreneur who helped change
Japan's image from a maker of slipshod products to world-class manufacturer.
``Morita was a leading figure who played a pivotal role in developing Japan's postwar
economy,'' Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi was quoted as saying by Kyodo News
agency.
Morita, whose health had been failing for several years, died Sunday of pneumonia. He
was 78.
Obuchi was one of about 400 people who visited the world-renowned businessman's
Tokyo home following his death.
Morita co-founded the electronics giant in a bombed-out department store after World
War II. He was the last of a generation of Japanese industrialists that included
carmaker Soichiro Honda and electronics rival Konosuke Matsushita.
A front page article in Japan's national Asahi newspaper called him the ``face of
Japan's economic sector.''
Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, who co-authored ``The Japan That Can Say No,''
with Morita, called him an exceptional businessman with a cosmopolitan outlook.
``He had the international mind that Japan lacked in the past and looked at Japan's
place in the world with a sense of relativity,'' Ishihara said.
He added that if Morita had become chairman of Japan's top business lobby, the Japan
Federation of Economic Organizations, ``the Japanese economy might have changed.''
Morita was a savvy salesman who became No. 386 on Forbes magazine's list of
billionaires, with an estimated worth of $1.3 billion. He was also the only
non-American on U.S.-based Time magazine's list of the top 19 businessmen of the
20th century.
In the late 1980s, he called for many of the economic reforms now being carried out by
Japan's government, although he reportedly declined an offer to become foreign
minister in August 1993.
``Mr. Morita was a hero for me. He hewed through the world market and breathed life
into the company and the Sony brand,'' company president Nobuyuki Idei said.
Born in the central Japanese city of Nagoya on Jan. 26, 1921, Morita retired as Sony's
chairman in 1994. A year earlier he had suffered a stroke that left him weakened and in
a wheelchair.
Sony Corp. began in 1946 when Morita, the oldest son of a rice-wine brewer, joined
former Japanese navy colleague Masaru Ibuka, a fellow engineer, to start a business
repairing radios on a borrowed $500.
Using old parts and ingenuity in Japan's harsh postwar economy, he and Ibuka
produced Japan's first magnetic recording tape and tape recorder in 1950.
They made Japan's first transistors in 1954 after convincing government industrial
planners to allow their upstart company to buy the rights to the American device. They
made Japan's first all-transistor radio in 1955.
Sony made the world's first all-transistor television in 1960 and the first home video
tape recorder in 1965.
With Morita as president of Sony's U.S. subsidiary, Sony in 1970 became the first
Japanese firm to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange and in 1972 became one of
the first Japanese companies to build a U.S. factory.
Probably the company's most famous success was the Walkman personal stereo
cassette player, which Sony began selling in the 1980s.
Morita was also ready to acknowledge his occasional blunders. His best-known gaffe
was in VCRs. When the market for videocassette recorders was in its infancy in the
early 1980s, Sony pushed its Beta recording format but lost to competitors who used
the more popular VHS standard.
Even without Morita at the helm, Sony continues to lead the world in electronics and
computer entertainment. Earlier this month, the company launched a new attack on
rival game makers Sega and Nintendo by announcing next year's launch of an improved
version of its popular PlayStation system.
-----Transmission Complete----- If you want to email me...Don't
Morita really is more responsible than any other individual for the shape of the modern consumer electronics industry. Beta might not have been a "win" at the consumer level (it's still popular in the professional marketplace), but the Walkman (and all it's derivatives), the 3.5" floppy that's still the de facto compatibility benchmark in the computer industry, and the CD itself were all things that his Sony produced or collaborated on. Morita also was instrumental in accelerating the pace of product releases (creating a relentless consumer demand for "the latest model"), and moving away from the boxy, purely functional look that products once had - Sony has generally been a style leader.
Interestingly, I'm typing this on my new iBook - and Jobs' desire to produce products with a consumer-oriented "look" to them has been, by his own admission, profoundly influenced by Sony.
Although Morita stepped away from direct control over the company in the mid-'90s, I wonder if Sony risks losing a sense of direction without the founder present to "center" the company. It will be interesting to see. Sony still is strong in newer categories like CD recording and digital video (they are a leader in the deployment of FireWire devices), along with some of the more interesting PC designs (I'd love a PictureBook, oh yes...). Will they stay that way?
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
A more detailed obituary is available on MSNBC ...no @#$$!@# login needed either.
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
According to this article: "Morita [told] engineers to make Walkmans despite the lack of market research. "We don't believe in market research for a new product unknown to the public. So we never do any," he said.
How many great products never make it to the world because of some idiot in the marketing department who thinks his or her opinion is all that counts? It's not like marketing departments are ALWAYS right...or there wouldn't have been New Coke...Edsel...Iridium...Windows CE...
I really think someone who has guts to stand behind an idea is someone who will be sorely missed in this technology-based world.
And Beta was better, anyway...it's still the standard for broadcasting. Sony just didn't have the media clout back then to get high volumes of popular movies in that format...
My opinion...maybe true...probably not...just true enough to me.
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing