Sony

"Not only was she worried that the features we were building were charming but useless, she was also worried we wouldn’t actually build them. “We just worked with Sony marketing to make an ad campaign saying the Magic Link will be able to do all these things. Is it true? Can we actually deliver?” This was probably around the fifth time we’d pushed back our launch date. Many of the features we’d promised investors and partners had fallen through. The product was slow and buggy. And she wanted to know what was happening behind the scenes—not just what she was hearing from leadership. Where will wireless messaging work? Where won’t it work? What’s the customer experience really going to be? What are the trade-offs?"

"Geographic boundaries. The affective valence may apply in one region but not another. For example, for many years, Sony enjoyed a Branding advantage with its televisions in the United States. In Japan, however, it enjoyed no such advantage, thus…"

"Originally, when starting his business, Wang Chuanfu plunged into the mobile phone battery industry. From nickel batteries to lithium batteries, BYD calmly caught up, once making industry giants like Sony and Sanyo fearful. Just when people were amazed at Wang Chuanfu's aggressive stance in the battery industry, he swiftly shifted to the highly competitive automobile industry. However, the glory in the battery industry did not mean that Wang Chuanfu could also be successful in the automotive industry."

"One would think a company that broke the $1 billion revenue mark after little more than a decade and that now, three years later in the midst of a serious recession, is closing in on twice that would be pointed out with boring regularity as a rare and inspir- ing American triumph, with the State Department practically running guided tours and the news magazines pestering CA founder and chairman Charles B. Wang for authoritative an- swers to the usual dumb questions about the ongoing crisis in the economy, how to stop Sony from taking over the world, and why Johnny not only can’t read but can’t count."

"Frustrated by Apple’s in-house manufacturing deficiencies, Gassée advocated for the Portable’s laptop successor, the PowerBook, to be outsourced to contract manufacturers in Japan. This ignited a contentious debate in Cupertino, and Gassée, a Frenchman, was branded “anti-American.” But he won the debate, partially. Apple designed three PowerBooks—the 100, the 140 and the 160, in order of price—and had the 100 assembled in Japan. Sony canceled other projects to take on the challenge and freed up seven of its top engineers. Working from a half-page document of Apple specifications, Sony crammed the innards of a $4,500 Mac desktop into the form factor of a five-pound laptop. The whole project went from drawing board to production in just thirteen months, wowing Apple. It was priced at $2,300."

"By the time Jobs had left, Apple had already started building strong ties in Japan. Jobs had visited Tokyo frequently in the early 1980s, enamored with the Sony Walkman and the emergence of automated manufacturing capabilities. Jay Elliot recalls being with Jobs at a traditional kaiseki multicourse dinner with executives from Sony at an over-the-top restaurant that hosted only one group per night. The start was inauspicious. Elliot, six-four and wearing size 14 shoes, couldn’t fit into the ceremonial attire. “They didn’t know what to do about it—they were so upset,” Elliot recalls. He and Jobs sat on tatami mats and wore ritualistic masks between courses. The highlight, he says, was being given an ornate wooden hammer to break open a clay pot, revealing a delicately cooked dish inside."

"“That’s how it all started—our relationship with contract manufacturing,” Gassée says. “As opposed to just getting the pieces like a disk drive and then assembling it ourselves. It started a culture of relying on, mostly, Japanese manufacturers.” The cost and quality of what Sony did, he says, awakened many to the capabilities of the Japanese in particular and outsourcers in general. “They were very good, and it was clear to me that we—the Americans—had no way to compete with what they did.”"

"“You’ve built an impressive HDTV set,” I said to Morita. “What if we were to buy ten thousand of ’em? What would it cost us?” Morita talked to his deputies and they retreated to a corner for a moment. When we reconnected minutes later, Morita smiled politely and said, “We can build them for seven thousand U.S. dollars apiece.” Which was a great price at the time, because in Japan they were not yet the commodity that they are now. We had seen ads for HDTV sets for $30,000. Then the visiting cable team was off by themselves, too. “Hey, John, we didn’t bring our checkbook, and I’m not authorized to spend anything!” said one CTO, concerned we were in the middle of a purchase order. The intention wasn’t to buy HDTV sets, I explained. A simple question like that will get you answers from Sony about how they’re thinking about high-volume production. What are they pricing sets at, how many can they make, and how quickly can they penetrate the market? All these things, just by asking a question."

"Consumer electronics revolution─① Konosuke Matsushita (Panasonic), ② Masaru Ibuka & Akio Morita (Sony)"

"The Japanese were eager to reciprocate Canberra’s hospitality. The gesture of making Canberra and Hiroshima sister TV stations would have done, but the President of Sony was determined to sell Seven Canberra the best transmitting equipment the company made at a bargain price to promote its use in the great Australian capital. He pressed Stokes to say what he could afford to buy. Embarrassed, Stokes said he could not afford any of it. The Sony man asked him how much money his station could afford to spend and Stokes mumbled: ‘Maybe a million dollars or a million and a half?’ It was the Sony man’s turn to be embarrassed. The equipment was worth many times that. But the Sydney stations had been so discourteous, he said, that he was determined to show them what they had missed out on. He accepted. ‘So we got all this equipment for $1.5 million!’ says Stokes, still amazed. For years after that, Seven Canberra had the most advanced equipment in Australia. The trip had turned into a huge success, all because of a barbecue and a joy ride in some old cars that would otherwise have been sitting in a garage."