We knew this was coming. It was only a matter of when. While it might come as a surprise to many, Sony was still making the “Original” Walkman – the one that plays audio cassettes – even now in 2010. While Sony might have done it for nostalgic reasons, with audio cassettes seriously outdated technology and the Walkman brand trickling on to Sony’s flash based music players, the company thought the time has come to pull the plug on the cassette playing, original Walkman.
Invented by Sony back in 1979, the Walkman brand went on to become a raging success and became the “de facto” name for compact music players. Perhaps, the only compact music related product to come close to the Walkman in terms of brand recall would have to the Apple iPod. But then, the iPod doesn’t boast of a 30 year old lineage.
From the first model, the TPS-L2, which was made in Japan, Sony went on to sell over 200,020,000 units worldwide in its thirty years of existence. Thanks to the Walkman, the then “modern” audio cassette technology became a raging success and caused Vinyl records to go out of business in a matter of just four years. The first Walkman, TPS-L2, came with attractive features and was known as the “Sound About” in the US and “Stowaway” in the UK. It came with a leather case and had two earphone jacks so that two people could listen from it simultaneously.
The TPS -L2
The TPS- L2
Sony eventually copyrighted the name Walkman, and it became synonymous with compact music players with people calling their compact music players a “Walkman” even today, irrespective of the brand they are using
The following years saw a horde of various Walkman variants being launched with various new features. Thee has been Walkmans with AM/FM receivers, support for bass boost and auto-reverse as well where users didn’t have to switch the cassette sides. There was even a solar powered Walkman and ones that were water resistant. Note that this cessation of production is only for the Japanese market.
Sony is likely to make cassette playing Walkman in China and the Middle East for some time more – but its almost certain that there too, its days are numbered.
So long, old friend!
[Via Crunchgear]
I still have a lot of Cassettes with music from my Dad’s collection. Although I have helped him to convert his entire collection to MP3 and also bought him a Creative zen music player, but I am still not able to figure out what to do with the 1000+ cassettes 😀
Any ideas?
These MP3 PLAYER itself is a redundant object. Every cell phone these days is an MP3 player. So stand alone Mp3 functionality is a waste of money. Stand alone Mp3 players even today cannot player FLAC and lossless files. Mp3 playing is now no longer a “unique functionality”. Cassette playback is still unique.
Sony is not there only company which makes the tape walkman. Several Chinese companies make them and they are still very popular. “Personal stereo” tape player is the common name used. In terms of Battery life, cassette personal stereos are still lot better than the “latest technology” crappy Mp3 players. The websites like Ali Express, Ebay are loaded with them. Sony stopping them is good for Chinese companies.
Not really, Andrew. Myself and most of my friends use their iPods/MP3s regardless of having MP3 functionalities on their mobile phones, even those who have iPhones and Blackberrys use their MP3s.