Sony Shifts Electronic Gears

For nearly 40 years, Sony Corp. has been synonymous with advanced consumer electronics, from Trinitron TVs to Walkman cassette players. Now the company has decided to shift gears. Chairman and Co-Founder Akio Morita, 63, confirmed last week that Sony is changing its focus to products for business and industry: communications and broadcast equipment semiconductors and other component parts. Says Morita: "We won't be primarily a radio and tape-recorder company any more "

The reasons for Sony's switch have been clear for some time As the market for audio and video equipment has grown more crowded sales of Sony's higher-priced goods have slowed. Meanwhile, the company's ventures into new markets, like personal computers, have seemed sluggish and halfhearted. The worst blow came in videotape recorders. Sony's Betamax, which started the home-taping explosion, has been overtaken in sales by the VHS format adopted by most of its rivals.

Sony still sells 75% of its products to consumers and will not entirely abandon the home market. But Morita hopes that by 1990 half the firm's sales will come from industry, where the profits are bigger and the customers less fickle.