The growing popularity of digital downloads has sealed the fate of Sony’s iconic cassette Walkman, with the Japanese company announcing that it will cease production of the device.
Sony has signalled the end of an era by ceasing production of its Walkman range of portable cassette music players.
The personal music devices – which were hugely popular in the 1980s, and enabled people to listen to their music on the move – have since lost out to iPods and other MP3 music players that use digital tracks rather than physical media.
Sony said that its April shipment will be its last. The Japanese electronics giant has sold more than 200 million Walkmans since the device first went on sale in 1979.
Although the Walkman was superseded by Sony’s portable CD player, the Discman, and its range of miniDisc players, the Walkman still sold in modest numbers until the turn of the century, when the introduction of the iPod, and the shift towards MP3 files rather than cassettes and CDs, contributed to the Walkman’s demise.
Sony said that it would continue to sell some cassette Walkmans in parts of Asia and the Middle East where there remains some demand, and the Walkman brand lives on as part of Sony Ericsson’s range of music phones, as well as new digital music players.
The Walkman was the brainchild of Nobutoshi Kihara, an engineer in the audio division at Sony. He had been asked by his chairman, Akio Morita, to design a device that would help the executive to pass the time on his frequent business trips, and enable him to listen to his favourite operas.
LAME!
No comments:
Post a Comment