In the late 60's Sony started buying up shares of AIWA until the early 90's when it gained full control. I've read different versions of the structure and amount Sony had. I'm going to try to compile articles to figure out the full time-line and if they had any cross-development. As a kid we always thought they were competing companies, maybe it was all marketing? Feel free to contribute any knowledge you may have. To make things confusing, Superscope, which also owned Marantz, had Sony distribution rights (for tape products) to North America up until 1979, right before the Walkman was released. This article talks about one of many lawsuits Sony and Superscope had. Billboard August 1969
In 1972 Billboard, it states that Sony owns 50% of AIWA, that is a very odd ratio and it looks like Superscope lost it's case since AIWA stayed with it's USA Distribution Channels.
September 1973, Billboard Magazine, AIWA ditches it's USA Distributor. "Emphasis in the product line designed to herald the firm's new U.S. market push, is on portable casstte products, many of which boast AM/FM radio combinations"
This is also posted in the BBX A Thread, it looks like Milovac died in 73 and the company was dissolved ending AIWA Distribution.
The links between Masushita/Panasonic and Sanyo were always tight https://factsanddetails.com/japan/cat24/sub157/item916.html To add to the strangeness, one of Sanyo's most famous products, the Eneloop battery are noe made by Fujitsu but marketed as Panasonic. Back to Aiwa I thought you could tell the level of Sonyness from the Logo.
Cool page Longman, I wish we knew more about how much autonomy these companies had. It's too bad we never hear from "TPR" anymore or axel over on the VintageKnob, they used to know everything about these companies. When you think of consumer video equipment and the big meeting between Sony (Beta) and the others (VHS) in the late 70's, it kind of sums up all of the collaborations, they didn't mind sharing the big ideas as long as everyone got a piece of the pie. I also like that they kept the other companies identies, over here all of the big companies I worked for wanted to absorb and get rid of any branding or identies of the companies they purchased. I know who makes Technics but their 70's quality always seemed better than the sister brands. Would Technics have been as huge as a Panasonic Brand? Intially they were branded "Technics by Panasonic" but they dropped Panasonic and the rest is history. "Late Zen master Taiki Tachibana, a prominent figure in Buddhist circles in Kyoto, reportedly told Konosuke Matsushita, the late founder of home appliance giant Panasonic Corp., to his face: "Because of you, Japan has become an awful place [with people] losing their compassion and only seeking material gratification. This must be corrected under your responsibility.""
I almost mentioned the VHS vs Betamax "video war", but realised that over here Sanyo had a foot in both camps as they were selling Betamax using the Sanyo brand and VHS using their Fisher brand. An advantage of having two brands. Obviously they didn't want to kill off their Beta sales by being seen to defect to VHS. In about 1983 Sanyo had the best selling VCR in the U.K. in the form of their Betamax VTC5000 (probably the cheapest new VCR available at the time, while only having a big selling VHS VCR. That was about the only time I saw Fisher equipment for sale here. Back to Aiwa I had already guessed which camp they would be in http://www.betamaxcollectors.com/aiwabetavcrmodelav-50m.html
My personal observations were AIWA's Video Machines were a little better than 90% of Sony's Offerings until they changed the logo in the early 90's. The ones I saw were the big beefy units like you posted until they went cheap and plasticy (like most electonics did). It would be facinating to hear more about the world-wide marketing strategy of these companies. Sanyo USA always seemed to be a solid brand but nothing special, Fisher was positioned at the bottom and was the discount/department store favorite. World-wide, Sanyo and Fisher had a similar synergy to AIWA and Sony but not here. I still have my early 80's Sony Betamax! I have no idea how I lugged it around for all of these years, bought before college, I think it still runs. I kept a box of tapes around somewhere, I think I even have the first generation Star Wars, the one where no work was done to it that everyone wants to see now.
Sometimes different names in different markets were a necessity. Matsushita couldn't use the National brand in the U.S.A. because there was already a radio manufacturer using it. Philips had to use Norelco as Philips was thought to be too close to Philco. In the U.K. Kenwood was branded Trio as Kenwood was (and still is) a brand of kitchen appliances. Eventually they got permission to use the name. In the U.K. Amstrad took that position with mainly empty stack systems. Before I moved house I had three Sony C6s which I gave away when I moved. You could tell Betamax was finished, when in the early 1990s someone was selling "Star Wars Tape £10 complete with free VCR". Last year I decided I wanted a Betamax again and ended up buying two SL-F1 portables both of which still work.
From November 1979, ETI Magazine (UK). This must have been around the time AIWA opened up the UK Factory producing some of the "22" Series. Sony is considered a "Rival" Company.
Fisher was actually a high quality, respected player in the home hifi category up until the mid-late 70s when Sanyo bought them. At that point they started moving towards cheap "rack" systems with particle-board speakers, but their boomboxes were high-quality, many of them being re-badged Sanyos, along with several nice ones that were not shared with Sanyo, such as the PH-460, PH-480, PH-490, and PH-492. In contrast, every Amstrad unit I've seen was low-quality. They were basically England's version of Yorx, lol.
Amstrad PC 1640 was a very nice, well designed system. We had these in the office I worked at in early 1990s.
The Amstrad computers have a much better reputation than their "HiFi" systems. At the time of the PC1640 Amstrad were the best selling P.C.s in Europe.
Longman that’s because there were very very cheap and you get what you pay for. I had an Amstrad 6128, when my friends had Commodore Vic20’s, 64's and ZX Spectrum etc. Mind you the spectrum is about as cheap as the Amstrad with regards to build quality.
Fisher is a weird one for me, after the Sanyo buy-out I only saw really cheap all-in-one stacks, they pretty much killed conventional stereo sales. 40 years later we're finding out that some of the Fisher Products weren't too bad, some are actually pretty nice but overall I still blame them for the decline in upper mid-fi equipment. Amstrad never made it over here, Commodore was the most popular beginner's computer in the 80's, unfortunately we never saw the MSX Equipment. I'm sure a lot of companies expanded their core products with other electronics sourced from Taiwan or Hong Kong, at that point it was more about margin than standing. We still see companies doing that, over here Snap-On has an excellent tool reputation but they also license out the name and we see really crappy radios, power washers and some other swag that are really bottom of the barrel.
I would replace "still see" with "see it more and more". A single example is enough: Marantz. While "Marantz" is still owned by whoever bought it the last time... D&M Holdings, "Marantz Professional" is the name that was sold to inMusic to produce utter garbage. This is a complete reversal of 1970s trend, when stores ordered products from competent big-name manufacturers.
