Word: ibuka
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Sharing the Business. Father of the Japanese industry is Masaru Ibuka. 51, a prewar movie sound technician who in 1948 set up what is now the Sony Corp. to make tape recorders and other sound equipment. Hearing of the development of transistors at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Ibuka produced laboratory samples, brought them to the U.S. to arrange the first Japanese transistor-patent licensing agreement. While many U.S. electronics men concentrated on industrial and military uses of transistors. Ibuka went after the consumer market, started the Japanese fad for miniature radios, eventually attracted some 100 competitors into the field...
Last week Japanese electronics leaders were sharply divided over how hard to push exports of finished consumer products. Ibuka, whose radio exports rose from 32,000 sets in January to 55,000 in March, intends to keep on exporting under his own label. To avoid arousing a protectionist outcry in the U.S., many Japanese manufacturers think a better way to keep on growing is to sell components to U.S. companies to assemble, thus dividing up the work and the profit...