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Sony is Dusting Off the Walkman

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Sony is dusting off the name “Walkman” to compete with Apple’s
iPod. The Japanese are building on their own music experience to
capitalize on the popularity of the smaller MP3 player.

In the eighties and nineties the Sony Walkmans and Discmans
were a part of everyday life. But these days the MP3 player has
market dominance and the Japanese company has faded. Apple and
its iPod is now number one.

Just last week both companies introduced new MP3 players which
will be in direct competition with each other. Sony introduced
two players under the name “The New Walkman”, while Apple
released the iPod Nano.

Sony is using the name “Walkman” in the hope that 26 years
after the first introduction of the famous cassette player that
name still has competitive value. However, we must conclude that
however great Sony’s past accomplishments they have missed the
boat in the MP3 revolution in a major way. The main cause for
Sony’s failure is their stubborn refusal to give up the Attrac3
music format. While the whole world was exchanging MP3 files it
was only last year that Sony introduced players that can handle
this format.

By that time Apple was just releasing its seventh generation of
iPod-type players.

Sony now markets the NWA-1000 and NWA-3000. These music
players can directly communicate with the Sony music store
“Connect”. It is also possible to copy files from the computer
directly to the players.

Sony is well known for their activity in the music and film
business. They must use their position in this field to regain
market share and prestige in this interconnected industry.
Interconnected because it seems that it is both Sony’s and
Apple’s strategy to heavily interconnect music player, software
and music store. Apple’s iTunes was the first Internet music
store offered large-scale legal downloads of MP3 files.

Sony won’t give us any figures about their sales and market
share. Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple) has no problem with figures.
Perhaps the major reason for this is how good they are. Apple
claims about half a billion downloads in a heavily growing
market.

The iTunes store is heavily focused on its cooperation with the
iPod. This player is definitely the market leader among the more
expensive MP3 players which have their own hard disk. In the
cheaper segment, MP3 players with the so called flash memory,
the leaders are Creative, LG and iRiver. The iPod Shuffle with
its flash memory couldn’t do much about that. The negative
sentiment about the shuffle was mainly due to its lack of an LCD
screen and relatively high price.

With the iPod Nano Steve Jobs’ Apple has a twofold challenge on
its hands. Firstly there is the above-mentioned competition with
Sony. Secondly, the new Apple player has a storage space of 4Gb
of flash memory and no hard disk.

The iPod Nano is the successor to the iPod Mini. Apple is
constantly reducing the physical size and the prize of their
players. Their strategy seems to be to concentrate on iTunes as
their major profit producer.

There is an interesting time ahead of us — we will see heavy
competition between Apple and Sony both in the interconnected
markets of the MP3 players and their respective music stores.

Who will win? I don’t know, but one thing I do know is that
Apple was almost broke at the end of the last century. It has
been under the leadership of Steve Jobs that Apple made an
almost miraculous comeback as a major player on the global
market of mini-electronics.

Hans Dekker
http://www.articlesbase.com/art-and-entertainment-articles/sony-is-dusting-off-the-walkman-1266.html