Sony Retires the Cassette Walkman After 30 Years

[accadacca]

http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/walkman_full.jpg

mashable.com - After retiring the floppy disk (http://mashable.com/2010/04/27/floppy-dead/) in March, Sony has halted the manufacture and distribution of another now-obsolete technology: the cassette Walkman, the first low-cost, portable music player.

The final batch was shipped to Japanese retailers in April, according to IT Media (http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?u=http://plusd.itmedia.co.jp/lifestyle/articles/1010/22/news072.html&sl=ja&tl=en&hl=&ie=UTF-8). Once these units are sold, new cassette Walkmans will no longer be available through the manufacturer.

The first generation Walkman (which was called the Soundabout in the U.S., and the Stowaway in the UK) was released on July 1, 1979 in Japan. Although it later became a huge success, it only sold 3,000 units in its first month. Sony managed to sell some 200 million iterations of the cassette Walkman during the product line

[StudChild]

:hail2thechief::2thumbs:

[Kent K25]

Oh man....the memories....

Mowing the lawn SUCKED....then I got a walkman and mowing the lawn rocked!

[Jaxx]

I remember wanting the cool yellow sport model. I never got it :cry1:

38760

[ibenick]

I remember wanting the cool yellow sport model. I never got it :cry1:

It's not too late :naughty:

http://cgi.ebay.com/SONY-SPORTS-WALKMAN-FM-AM-CASSETTE-PLAYER-WM-AF59-/290490653618?pt=Cassette_Players&hash=item43a2979bb2

[Iceaxe]

I loved my walkman.... we wore them skiing at "The Bird" and knew we were stylin'

[Sombeech]

I loved my walkman.... we wore them skiing at "The Bird" and knew we were stylin'

With hot pink tiger pattern ski pants and all?

[Cirrus2000]

I got a WM-1 in 1981 - it was life-changing! It wasn't the very first model, but it was the one that went big - massive market penetration at a reasonable price point.

http://www.thebluedot.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/sony-walkman.jpg

My wife and I bought this sport one for our 6 week trip to Europe in 1988. Had a splitter, and both listened to it riding the trains around the continent.

http://audioidiots.com/Sony/catalogi/1987/middel/p072i2.jpg

[stefan]

3879938800

the sony walkman was brilliant :hail2thechief::hail2thechief::hail2thechief:

i still remember the first day i got one when i was a kid.



also ... a quote from former apple CEO john sculley about steve jobs from a bloomberg interview



I remember (Sony co-founder) Akio Morita gave us one of the first Sony Walkmans (http://www.tgdaily.com/business-and-law-features/52202-rumor-steve-jobs-eyes-sony-acquisition#). None of us had ever seen anything like that before, because there had never been a product like that. 

 This was 25 years ago and Steve was fascinated by it. The first thing he did was take it apart, and he looked at every single part. How the fit and finish was done, how it was built.

Steve's point of reference was Sony at the time. He really wanted to be Sony. He didn't want to be IBM. He didn't want to be Microsoft. He wanted to be Sony.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_44/b4201096309840.htm