Sony Corporation (Japanese:ソニー株式会社, Sonī Kabushiki-gaisha^?) is a Japanese multinational corporation and one of the world's largest media conglomerates with revenue of $68.39 billion (as of 2006). It is headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo ( 35°37'25.86"N, 139°43'55.39"E). It is one of the leading manufacturers of electronics, video, communications, video games, and information technology products for the consumer and professional markets.

Sony Corporation is an operating-holding company. It is the electronics business unit and the parent company of the Sony Group, which is engaged in business through its 6 operating segments — electronics, music, games, motion pictures, 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 and Sony Financial Holdings.

Sony recorded consolidated annual sales of approximately $67 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2005, and it employs 158,100 people worldwide. Sony's consolidated sales in the U.S. for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2005 were $18.4 billion. As a semiconductor maker, Sony is among the Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Sales Leaders. Its slogan is Sony. Like no other.

Sony has reported a loss of 94% of its profits for the fiscal second quarter of 2006, and has lost roughly 40% of its value from 2001 to 2006.

Notable Sony products, technologies and proprietary formats

See also: List of Sony trademarks

Sony has historically been notable for creating its own in-house standards for new recording and storage technologies instead of adopting those of other manufacturers and standards bodies. The most infamous of these was the videotape format war of the early 1980s, when Sony marketed its Betamax system for video cassette recorders against the VHS format developed by JVC. In the end, VHS gained critical mass in the marketplace and became the worldwide standard for consumer VCRs and Sony adopted the format. Since then, Sony has continued to introduce its own versions of storage technologies, with varying success. A * denotes a proprietary format.