Sony Then vs. Sony Now: Is It Still One of Japan’s Biggest Companies?

For anyone who grew up around Sony products, the company used to feel almost unavoidable. There were Sony televisions, Walkmans, CD players, stereos, camcorders, cameras, headphones, computers, and eventually PlayStations scattered across homes everywhere. Sony was not just a Japanese company. It was one of the companies people associated with Japan itself.

That image has changed, but Sony has not disappeared.

Sony Group still reported about ¥12.48 trillion in sales from continuing operations for the fiscal year ended March 2026, and its businesses now include gaming, music, movies, consumer electronics, and image sensors. Sony itself increasingly describes the company as a creative entertainment business built on technology rather than simply an electronics manufacturer.

The easiest way to understand modern Sony is to compare it with the Sony people remember from the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. Back then, many consumers experienced Sony primarily through physical products. The Walkman became a global symbol of portable music, Trinitron televisions developed a strong reputation, Sony cameras and camcorders were everywhere, and the company became one of the brands most closely associated with Japanese electronics.

PlayStation eventually became another enormous part of that identity. Today, gaming remains one of Sony's core businesses through PlayStation hardware, software, digital content, subscriptions, and network services.

But modern Sony is much broader than PlayStation.

Sony Music operates across recorded music and publishing, while Sony Pictures produces movies and television and operates media businesses. Sony also owns businesses tied to anime and streaming, including Crunchyroll, giving the company a position in entertainment that would have looked very different from the electronics-focused Sony many people remember.

Then there is a part of Sony that consumers may use without even realizing it. The company's Imaging & Sensing Solutions business produces CMOS image sensors used primarily in smartphones, along with cameras, automobiles, industrial equipment, and other applications. Someone can therefore own a phone from another manufacturer and still be using Sony technology every time they take a picture.

Consumer electronics have not vanished either. Sony still sells televisions, cameras, headphones, speakers, projectors, smartphones, and other products through its Entertainment, Technology & Services business. The difference is that these products no longer define the entire company the way electronics once seemed to.

Kato Tam explains, “Sony feels less visible today because we no longer see its name printed across every device in the house, but that does not mean the company became smaller or irrelevant. It moved into businesses where you might play, watch, listen to, or even use Sony technology without thinking about Sony at all.”

Sony Then vs. Sony Now

The old Sony was easier to recognize because consumers could physically see the brand everywhere. A Sony television sat in the living room, a Walkman went in your pocket, and a Sony stereo might sit on a shelf. Modern Sony can be less obvious because so much of its value comes from games, intellectual property, content, music rights, movies, anime, subscriptions, digital services, and components hidden inside other companies' products.

That may actually explain why some people wonder whether Sony is still as important as it once was.

The company is no longer dominating the conversation around televisions and portable music players in the same way it once did, but it has spent years moving toward businesses where entertainment and technology overlap. Sony's 2026 corporate strategy specifically emphasized entertainment, intellectual property, content creation, anime, and the potential use of artificial intelligence in future growth.

So is Sony still one of Japan's major companies? By its scale, global businesses, entertainment holdings, gaming presence, and technology operations, it remains a major Japanese corporation. The Kato Tam Group thinks the more interesting question is whether people still recognize how large Sony has become outside the electronics aisle.