Short answers, pulled from the story.
Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi announced the partnership with IBM and Toshiba to develop the new microprocessor on the 9th of March 2001. This announcement marked the beginning of development for what would become the Cell Broadband Engine architecture.
By late 2006, estimates placed the manufacturing cost of the 20 GB model at US$805.85 and the 60 GB model at US$840.35. These figures far exceeded their retail prices of $499 and $599 respectively, meaning Sony sold every unit at launch at a significant loss.
The console hit shelves in Japan on the 11th of November 2006 and followed six days later in North America on November 17. The European and Australasian markets faced a different reality as the PAL region launch was delayed until the 23rd of March 2007 due to component shortages.
Sony officially unveiled the PlayStation 3 Slim model designated CECH-2000 on the 18th of August 2009 during the Gamescom press conference. This new chassis featured reduced power consumption and a quieter cooling system achieved by transitioning to smaller fabrication processes for the CPU and GPU.
On the 1st of April 2010, Sony released firmware update version 3.21 which removed the ability to install alternative operating systems like Linux from all existing consoles except those that refused to update beyond version 3.15. This decision sparked controversy and led to several class action lawsuits aimed at making Sony return the feature or provide compensation.
By the end of its lifecycle, the PlayStation 3 had sold approximately 87.4 million units worldwide before final production in the Japanese market ceased on the 29th of May 2017. These figures represented a dramatic turnaround from the initial years where Sony lost money on every unit sold.