Sony

Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita founded Tokyo Tsūshin Kōgyō in 1946; it became Sony in 1958. Its 1981 Mavica stored analog video stills on a small floppy disk, an early sign of filmless photography, and its Cyber-shot compacts followed from 1996.

In 2006 Sony took over Konica Minolta’s camera business. In 2013 the α7 became the first full-frame mirrorless interchangeable-lens camera. Sony’s sensor division makes a large share of the world’s image sensors, including many in other brands’ cameras and in smartphones.