Sony is one of the leading manufacturers of
electronics,
video,
communications, video game consoles and
information technology products for the consumer and professional markets. Its name is derived from
Sonus, the
Greek goddess of sound.Sony Corporation is the electronics business unit and the parent company of the
Sony Group, which is engaged in business through its five operating segments—electronics, games, entertainment (motion pictures and music), financial services and other. These make Sony one of the most comprehensive entertainment companies in the world. Sony's principal business operations include Sony Corporation (
Sony Electronics in the U.S.),
Sony Pictures Entertainment,
Sony Computer Entertainment, Sony BMG Music Entertainment,
Sony Ericsson and
Sony Financial Holdings. As a semiconductor maker, Sony is among the Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Sales Leaders. The company's slogan is Sony.In July 2000, a marketing executive working for Sony Corporation created a fictitious film critic,
David Manning, who gave consistently good reviews for releases from Sony subsidiary Columbia Pictures, which generally received poor reviews amongst real critics.In November 2006, a marketing company employed by Sony created a website entitled "All I want for Xmas is a PSP", designed to promote the
PSP through viral marketing. The site contained a blog, which was purportedly written by "Charlie", a teenager attempting to get his friend "Jeremy"'s parents to buy him a PSP, providing links to t-shirt iron-ons, Christmas cards, and a "music video" of either Charlie or Jeremy "rapping". However, visitors to the website soon discovered that the website was registered to a marketing company, exposing the site on sites such as
YouTube and
digg, and Sony was forced to admit the site's true origin in a post on the blog, stating that they would from then on "stick to making cool products" and that they would use the website for "the facts on the PSP". The site has since been taken down. In an interview with next-gen.biz, Sony admitted that the idea was "poorly executed"Sony's policies address their effects on global warming, the environment, and resources. They are taking steps to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that they put out as well as regulating the products they get from their suppliers in a process that they call "green procurement"
[56]. Sony has said that they have signed on to have about 75 percent of their Sony Building running on
geothermal power. The "Sony Take Back Recycling Program" allows consumers to recycle the electronics products that they buy from Sony by taking them to
eCycle (Recycling) drop-off points around the U.S. The company has also developed a biobattery that runs on sugars and carbohydrates that works similarly to the way living creatures work. This is the most powerful small biobattery to dateIn 2000, Sony was ridiculed for a document entitled "
NGO Strategy" that was leaked to the press. This document involved the company's surveillance of environmental activists in an attempt to plan how to counter their movements. This document specifically mentioned environmental groups that were trying to pass laws that held electronics-producing companies responsible for the clean up of the toxic chemicals contained in their merchandise
[61]. In early July of 2007, Sony ranked 14th on the
Greenpeace chart "Guide to Greener Electronics." This chart graded major electronics companies on their environmental work. Sony fell from its earlier 11th place ranking due to
Greenpeace's claims that Sony had double standards in their waste policies
