Walkman

This article is about the Walkman brand. For information about the generic item, see Personal stereo. For the album by Bad Bad Hats, see Walkman (album).

Walkman
(left) Walkman logo used from 1981 until 2000; (right) Walkman logo used since 2000.
Left to right from top: a cassette Walkman (1980s), a CD Walkman (2001), an MD Walkman (1998), a digital Walkman (2011)
ManufacturerSony Corporation
TypePortable audio players and recorders
LifespanJuly 1, 1979[1] – present
Units sold385 million (all editions, as of March 31, 2009)[2]
Related

Walkman (Japanese: ウォークマン, Hepburn: U~ōkuman) is a brand of portable audio players manufactured and marketed by Japanese company Sony since 1979. The original Walkman started out as a portable cassette player[3][4] and the brand was later extended to serve most of Sony's portable audio devices; since 2011 it consists exclusively of digital flash memory players. The current flagship product as of 2022 is the WM1ZM2 player.[5]

Walkman cassette players were very popular during the 1980s, which led to "walkman" becoming an genericized label term for personal compact stereos of any producer or brand.[6] 220 million cassette-type Walkmen were sold by the end of production in 2010;[7] including digital Walkman devices such as DAT, MiniDisc, CD (originally Discman then renamed the CD Walkman) and memory-type media players,[8][9] it has sold approximately 400 million at this time.[7] The Walkman brand has also been applied to transistor radios, and Sony Ericsson mobile phones.

  1. ^ Haire, Meaghan (1 July 2009). "A Brief History of The Walkman". Time. ISSN 0040-781X. Retrieved 8 March 2023.
  2. ^ "Sony Japan – タイムカプセル vol.20 そして、その名は世界共通語になった". Sony.
  3. ^ Bull, Michael (2006). "Investigating the Culture of Mobile Listening: From Walkman to iPod". Consuming Music Together. Computer Supported Cooperative Work. 35: 131–149. doi:10.1007/1-4020-4097-0_7. ISBN 1-4020-4031-8.
  4. ^ Du Gay, Paul (1997). Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman. SAGE Publications. ISBN 9780761954026.
  5. ^ "Sony Announces Two New Premium High-End Digital Audio Players". Forbes.
  6. ^ Batey, Mark (2016), Brand Meaning: Meaning, Myth and Mystique in Today's Brands (Second ed.), Routledge, p. 140
  7. ^ a b 株式会社インプレス (22 October 2010). "ソニー、カセット型ウォークマンの生産・販売終了". AV Watch (in Japanese). Retrieved 8 August 2023.
  8. ^ "Sony's modern take on the iconic Walkman". The Hindu BusinessLine. 18 March 2020. Retrieved 17 May 2020.
  9. ^ "Sony History". Sony Electronics Inc. Retrieved 17 May 2020.