How Sony, Sharp and Samsung got their names - TechRadar UK

When it comes to the world’s biggest tech brands, most of us would be able to pick out Apple, Samsung, Sony and others as our favourites. But would you buy a TV from Tokyo Tsushin Kokyo, or a DVD player from Tanaka Seizo-Sho? If the answer’s no, then you should read on... We’ve picked nine of the world’s biggest brands so you can discover how they made their names

Samsung

This Korean colossus is a relative newcomer to consumer tech, starting the Samsung-Sanyo Electric Company as recently as 1969. Its roots go back to 1938 though, when founder Byung-Chull Lee started up a dried fruit, vegetable and fish export business. By the late 1970s, Samsung’s interests included petrochemical, construction, textile and ship-building industries, the company owned a string of hotels and was exporting colour TVs.

A decade later it was also making planes, dabbling in space technology and making the world’s smallest video recorders. Today Samsung is vying with Sony for title of world’s biggest consumer electronics maker and spends £0.85 billion a year on R&D. Samsung is the Korean name for ‘three stars’ - which is handy, as that’s the review score many of the company’s products get ;-)

Sony

Somewhat surprisingly Sony is actually younger than its Korean arch-rival, appearing in 1946 as Tokyo Tshushin Kokyo (aka Totsuko) Its first product was a rice cooker. The Sony brand - which is a conflation of Sonus, the Latin word for sound and Sonny (as in ‘young boy’) - first appeared in 1955. Totsuko became Sony Corporation three years later.

Early successes were the TR-55 transistor radio, TV5-303 portable TV and, of course, the TPS-L2 Walkman. Sony’s had something of a chequered past: it's enjoyed notable successes with CD, DVD and the PS3; but it’s just as famous for its flops - MiniDisc, DAT and Betamax. It also likes to provoke the ire of its customers - firstly with 2005’s root-kit disaster and then a year later with 2006’s exploding laptop battery epidemic, which saw 8 million Sony-made Li-Ion batteries being recalled.