JAPAN: Sony hits the stop button on the cassette Walkman
Sony has announced the end of the line for its Walkman cassette players in the Japanese market.
Production ended some months back, and sales will end when current stocks are exhausted. But the company will continue to sell the personal tape players, which are now made in China, in some export markets – notably in Asia and the Middle East.
The machines have fallen victim to the spread of the Internet, downloaded/ripped music and the popularity of MP3 players and Apple's iPod range.
Sony is also thought to be taking a long hard look at the future of its CD and MiniDisc Walkman players, which have also seen a decline in sales, in the Japanese market.
The Walkman invented the whole personal music player market when it was launched in 1979. Until then, cassette hardware was all about recorders, and many suggested that consumers wouldn't be interested in a playback-only machine, let alone one only able to be listened to on headphones.
Early models had twin headphone outputs, so music could be shared with a friend, and a 'talk' button enabling the sound to be muted for a conversation.
It was a development of an earlier Sony personal player, which had been used by the company's then honorary chairman while on long plane trips.
The machine he used sold for Y300,000 (then around £650), and was bulky, so the instruction went out to the engineers to make a much smaller, lighter machine able to be sold for less than Y40000 (around £85 at the time).
(By the way, it's worth noting that, at that time, the yen/£ exchange rate was around Y475-Y500 to the pound; today it's under Y130!)
The first machines went on sale on June 21, 1979, after the engineers had also come up with smaller, lighter headphones to match the players. Sony marketed the player by giving machines to young people and celebrities around Japan, and paying people to walk around Ginza, Tokyo's main shopping area, wearing the units.
The press launch involved a bus tour, with reporters listening to a recorded commentary and seeing actors posing around Tokyo wearing Walkman players.
The Walkman sold out in Japanese stores within a month, and it was launched in export markets soon after: it was called the Soundabout in the USA, the Stowaway in most of Europe, and the Freestyle in Sweden (because the Swedes weren't keen on what they saw as dubious connotations in the Stowaway name!).
However, the Walkman name soon became adopted everywhere, eventually making it into the Oxford English Dictionary as a generic term for portable cassette players.
In ten years Sony sold 50m units, and the concept was widely copied.
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Comments
a sad demise. Will always be remembered in our house after my brother asked Father Christmas for a personal stereo, but couldn't spell personal at the time.
Saint Nic understood, and he got his "percy snail stereo".
I used the Sony WM-D6C Walkman 'Pro' as a cassette deck in my hifi system (connected from the mains adaptor and never used as a portable). It was superb. A little marvel of precision electro-mechanical engineering.
I was going through a 'minimalist' period (all hifi on a small shelf out of reach of our - then - very young children) and my FM tuner was a similarly sized Sony ICF-SW7600 connected to my FM roof aerial and feeding a QED A240-SA amp and wall-bracket mounted Mordaunt Short MS20 speakers.
If I bought some new LPs I would get the turntable out (Rega Planar 3) from safe storage under the stairs - when the kids were asleep - and record them onto new TDK SA tapes (using the Walkman Pro) and then store the turntable and LPs away again from curious fingers.
Those Walkman Pro tapes were some of the best recorded cassettes I have ever had, and sounded even better than recordings made on a (much later) Yamaha KX-580.
I still have a Sony walkman, sad to hear it's the end of the road.
Aiwa made some amazing tape players. I think their top end models had the best sound. Sonys were too overblown and too much ephasis on mega bass made them mega distorted lol. The panasonics had great sound too but were a bit low on volume. Aiwas sounded clean and crisp. Some of the designs Aiwaw made were awesome like the top of range one they sold with a huge lcd screen on front with crazy spectrum analyser.
Sony Walkman 2 -- my first walkman! Should have got the 1. I still have a Walkman DD30, which is fab, and use the 2 for small parts (screws) and the external battery pack too.
First 3.5" floppy discs, now this, next Sony will stop making Betamax machines.
Wow - I think the biggest surprise is that they were actually still making them! Call me a techno-snob, but I can't help stifling a snigger if I ever see someone with a portable cassette or CD player these days
I had a special edition Aiwa walkman, complete with auto-reverse, and to this day no iPod etc comes close to it for sound quality.