Walkman turns 30, struggles to survive

Bangalore: The Walkman, which had revolutionized the way people listened to music, has turned 30 but the aura no more remains the same. The device faces stiff competition to survive in music industry where new music devices have made its mark.

The name Walkman was used as Superman was very famous in those days and it was also based on the fact that existing audio recorders were called 'Pressman'. Back then, Sony's Co-Founder Masaru Ibuka came up with the idea for the music device on one of his overseas trips, during which he used to listen to music on existing tape recorders that were too heavy to be considered truly portable.

On July 1, 1979, Sony had launched walkman, a portable cassette player which helped this Japanese company to become a global power house. Within two months of the launch, Sony had sold 30,000 walkmans. Initially vendors and retailers thought that walkman won't work but within one decade Sony had managed to sell 50 million of these music players. Even though total sales of the Walkman have reached 385 million across the world, including newer digital models that use flash memory, Sony is struggling to convince the customers to go for Walkman than other portable music devices. iPod has fairly managed to replace Walkman in this digital age.