Sony has finally retired the Walkman cassette player, citing lackluster demand for the outdated device.
The company says they produced their last batch of the device in Japan in April and once that inventory clears out, the Walkman will be retired to the history books.
A Chinese company will still produce some units after Sony’s supply is exhausted but it is hard to believe they will continue to produce for the foreseeable future.
Sony began selling the Walkman in 1979 and has seen 220 million units sold over the past 31 years.
Walkman sales have been in steep decline since the introduction of portable CD players and even more so with the launch of portable MP3 players earlier this ddecade.
Sony will continue to use the “Walkman” brand, however, in phones and media players.
Result for: walkman
Sony has announced the price of its first ever touchscreen Walkman media players, part of the NX-X1000 series.
The NW-X1050, which will hit Japan on April 25th, will sell for $400 USD and has 16GB of built-in flash memory while its higher capacity brother, the NW-X1060, will sell for $500 USD and will include 32GB of memory.
Each player supports Wi-Fi and will allow playback of YouTube videos and the downloading of podcasts. Also of note, the players have integrated FM and 1Seg TV tuners and will allow recording of content if broadcasters support it.
The media players have nice OLED touchscreens and for audio support AAC, MP3 and WMA. For video files, MPEG-4, H.264 and WMV are supported.
EX earphones are bundled with each player and offer integrated noise reduction.
Result for: walkman
Although neither company has confirmed or denied the report, Manager-Magazin.de is writing that Sony is planning to buyout Ericsson’s 50 percent stake of the Sony Ericsson mobile manufacturing joint venture.
Sony is currently talking to banks that will help finance the buyout and the rumor has been flying for months that Ericsson is willing to sell its stake in the venture.
The company was created as a way to “bring Ericsson’s mobile experience and Sony’s consumer electronics experience together for a successful line of cell phones.” The company had been decently successful with its line of Walkman phones but recently announced Q4 2008 loss of $187 million EUR with more losses expected if the global recession continues.
Danske Bank of Denmark believes any deal made would cost Sony very little cash and could actually lose Ericsson money.
