The most famous leader of Sony Corporation is none other than Akio Morita, the current chairman and one of the founders of Sony. He is known as the "saint of management" by the Japanese, and Konosuke Matsushita, who is known as the "god of management", and is known as two of Japan's great business wizards of the 20th century.

Akio Morita is a well-deserved dictator within Sony, and although the highest power of Sony is the board of directors, 26 of the 30 seats on Sony's board of directors come from senior executives at the top of the company's internal administrative ladder.

This made Sony's board of directors almost a rubber stamp for Akio Morita, and it was impossible to effectively restrain Akio Morita's rights. The reason why Sony's development has been able to flourish over the years is that, on the one hand, there have been no serious mistakes in the development vision of Akio Morita, a dictator, and on the other hand, it is also because the specific manager of Sony, Norio Oga, is also an extremely outstanding entrepreneur.

Norio Oga has been praised by the Japanese media as "the most art-savvy technologist and the most technologically savvy artist". As the CEO of Sony, one of the world's leading electronics companies, Norio Ohga graduated from the Tokyo National University of Arts and Music, and later went on to study at the Munich Conservatory.

Norio Oga is an artist with a well-developed right brain and voice, and according to the normal trajectory, he should evolve into a singer or musician. But he embarked on a path of being a CEO who thinks with his left brain and deals with financial statements, stock prices, etc. all day long.

And the magical turning point in Norio Oga's life came from a visit to the predecessor of Sony. Visit of Tokyo Telecommunications Industry Co., Ltd. At the time, Norio Ohga was still an art student, but when he visited the Tokyo Telecommunications Industry Company, he was in front of a group of professional engineers in the company. Ruthlessly approved a large number of tape recorders produced by them.

Of course, the biggest difference between Norio Oga and the ordinary "water blower" is that while he was explaining, he even drew a precise design drawing of the internal structure of the tape recorder on the spot. I believe that anyone who has been exposed to engineering drawing will know what kind of realm this is for an art student!

So to the company's management, including Akio Morita. They were all very impressed with this student. However, at that time, Norio Ohga's life dream was to become a famous baritone singer. So he wasn't interested in the poaching of Akio Morita, and just reluctantly served as the company's music consultant. After that, he went to Germany for further study.

Later, by taking the lady route, Akio Morita first persuaded Norio Oga's wife, Midori Matsubara, and then finally succeeded in recruiting Norio Oga into his command. In 1979, at the age of 29, Norio Ohga joined Sony. From the beginning, he served as the general manager of the professional product division. He also leads the product design department at Sony Corporation.

In 1964, five years after joining the company, Norio Oga became a director on Sony's board of directors. This kind of promotion speed is unheard of in a Japanese company with a serious atmosphere of seniority.

In the 70s and 80s, Norio Ohga single-handedly promoted the development of two revolutionary products in the field of music audio-visual, the Walkman and the CD player. If the advent of the Walkman has made listening to music anytime, anywhere no longer a dream, then the advent of CDs and portable CD players has made high-quality music no longer limited to being enjoyed on bulky vinyl record players.

CD was actually the first technology developed by Philips in the Netherlands. But Norio Oga saw at a sight that it could replace traditional vinyl records. So he withstood a lot of internal doubts and opposition, and let Sony keep putting pressure on the Dutch. In the end, Philips had no choice but to follow his rhythm.

It is known that a standard CD has a capacity of 75 bells, just enough to hold Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. And this capacity criterion was decided by Norio Ohga himself, because the Ninth Symphony was his wife's favorite.

In just five years since Sony released its first laser record in 1982, CD sales in Japan last year have surpassed traditional vinyl records, and the way people listen to music has changed profoundly. Music is moving from the analog age to the digital age, and Norio Oga is being called the "father of CD" by more and more Japanese media.

To some extent, VCD is just a technical upgrade variant of CD. Instead of compressing and storing sound, it is now possible to store both sound and picture at the same time. Therefore, Norio Oga's technical understanding of VCD players is more profound than that of other Japanese video recorder manufacturers such as JVC.

The transformation of the audiovisual field from analog to digital is an irreversible trend in the development of technology. Because of this, Norio Oga recognized the future of CD as early as 10 years ago.

And the reason why Sony announced this year that it would abandon the production of its own BETA format video recorder is by no means really ready to bow down to JVC and the Panasonic company behind it in the field of home video. Instead, Sony has shifted the focus of competition to the research and development of the next generation of digital home video playback equipment.

But Norio Ohga didn't expect Dongfang Electronics to take the lead and be the first to come up with practical digital home video playback equipment. The core of VCD technology is the MPEG-1 compression standard, although the Eastern Group has a lot of say in the formulation of MPEG-1 standards, but Sony is also one of the main formulators of the MPEG-1 standard.

More importantly, the full name of VCD is VideoCD, so its reading and burning equipment, as well as optical disc media, are actually no technical generation difference with ordinary CDs. The technical standards for CD were jointly formulated by Sony Philips, and even the Oriental Group relied on the fact that these two companies wanted to promote optical drives in the emerging computer industry, and successfully obtained a complete technical license.

In fact, the technical foundation of Sony's VCD player is better than that of Dongfang Electronics, but it did not choose to do so. Because the technical level of VCDs is comparable to that of existing video recorders, Sony's research and development goals for digital imaging equipment have long been aimed at a higher standard.

So when the VCD player just started to come out, Norio Ohga didn't pay much attention to it. Because a new technology wants to really go viral. It's not something that happens overnight. It is by no means easy for VCD to compete with the VCR that has been cultivated for more than ten years in the market without any technical advantages.

The Oriental Group simply buys the content rights for VCDs. It costs a lot of money. After the Oriental Group invested a lot of money to open up the market, Sony's more advanced products could just replace the existing video recorders, so that the Eastern Group suffered a big loss.

At the beginning, Sony suffered from the copyright of the content. This is one of the important reasons why the BETA format failed. That's why Akio Morita had the heart to buy Columbia (CBS) Records, and after taking the world's top three record giants, Sony's CD players and other products had a sufficient supply of content.

And in addition to CBS Records, Morita Shov is also interested in the entire Columbia Group. Its CBS television station is one of the three largest public television broadcasting networks in the United States, and CBS Pictures is one of Hollywood's top eight production companies.

It's just that Li Xuan acquired RCA through the merger and acquisition. After the successful acquisition of NBC, American society has become much more wary of foreign capital buying television networks. And even Li Xuan, in order to show that he has no ambition to control American public opinion, not only took the initiative to split NBC Broadcasting Company and go public. It also further relinquished its absolute controlling stake.

Therefore, it is not easy for Sony to annex CBS TV, but it is the next target for Akio Morita to achieve CBS Pictures. Owning its own copyright database allows Sony to get a head start on the competition for the next generation of video playback devices.

Columbia Pictures is the only production company among Hollywood's eight giants that owns the full rights to nearly 2,700 of its own films. Preempt control of upstream content. This is Sony in the video recorder format wars of BETA and VHS. An important lesson learned.

The stones of other mountains can attack jade, and the Eastern Bloc has obviously learned from Sony's experience. Therefore, before the official launch of the VCD player, Oriental Commercial Company almost covered the copyright of Hong Kong films. This trick to cut off the grain channel has given VCD an advantage in the competition in the Asian market in one fell swoop.

Most Asian countries, including Japan, have lackluster local film industries, with the exception of Hong Kong films, which have been flourishing in recent years. Relying on the advantage of being close to the water, the Oriental Commercial Company took the lead in seizing the copyright of Hong Kong films. But there is not much opportunity for the copyright of Hollywood films.

Because after decades of development, the Hollywood film industry has already built a mature global distribution system. Industry giants like the Big Eight studios. There is no reason to bend down and cooperate with Oriental Merchants. Oriental Commercial wants to record VCD discs of European and American movies, unless it invests heavily in buying copyrights.

Japanese manufacturers such as JVC and Sony have close ties and cooperation with Hollywood. With just a little pressure here, it can make it several times more difficult for Oriental Commercial to obtain copyrights.

Therefore, although VCD has an exclusive advantage in the copyright of Hong Kong films, it is not enough to overturn the market and consumption habits that VCRs have established in 15 years.

It's just that Norio Ohga didn't expect Li Xuan to play his cards according to common sense at all, he didn't think about getting the copyright of European and American films from formal channels, but directly used piracy to solve the problem.

If there are a large number of pirated VCD discs of European and American movies on the market, then the last shortcoming of VCD players in content supply has also been filled. It's just that this approach will seriously damage the interests of the entire film industry, and it is simply an enemy of the entire film industry, so the Eastern Bloc must draw a line with piracy.

Norio Ohga looked at the information collected by the company's intelligence department, and the pirated video of "Diary of a Big Husband" first appeared in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. According to the evidence provided by Asia Pictures to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, the provider of the pirated videotapes was a Japanese businessman who had a close relationship with the Kuala Lumpur branch of the Sumiyoshi Society.

In recent years, Sumiyoshikai has expanded overseas, actively penetrating North America, South America, Europe, and Southeast Asia. The Japanese businessman, who is suspected to be a member of the Sumiyoshi Association, directly commissioned a Japanese-owned factory in Kuala Lumpur to produce pirated video tapes.

If it is said that pirated videotapes can be excused, it is the illegal profit-making of the mafia-social organization. Then, according to the clues provided by Asia Pictures, a batch of pirated VCD discs seized by the Fukuoka Prefectural Police Department a few days ago made Norio Ohga smell a strong conspiracy.

Oriental Shoji's VCD players did not enter the Japanese market on a large scale, and these pirated video discs could only be sold overseas. Even in other Asian countries, VCD players have only just been put on sale, and the VCD market is still much smaller than the video tape market. Even if you want to rely on piracy to make illegal profits, choosing a VCD that is still in the promotion period is obviously not a really wise business choice! )

PS: PS: Celebrate Honggu's birthday, there is still a chapter, but it may be late!