I know it's ironic I should follow-up posting a video celebrating the anniversary of the Walkman with this, but it seems worthy of reading: https://qz.com/1658269/the-sony-walkman-at-40-shows-whats-wrong-with-the-company/
I noticed there was no 2019 Walkman in the 40th Anniversary Video. I can't say I'm surprised. I doubt if any of what were Sony's rivals back in the 20th century make any kind of personal audio equipment at all. It is natural for companies to drop out of markets they can't compete in. What happened to Apple's Pippin Games Console ? It is also usual for all the innovation to happen in the early years of a product. I once had a thick book from Sharp listing all their innovations. At the time there was massive rivalry between them and Casio to make the smallest thinnest Calculator and new models were released every few months. This continued until Casio came out with a calculator the size of a credit card - thickness included. Like it or otherwise, times have moved on and most people use Smartphones for all their media needs. Recently I have picked up several working Compact Digital cameras (e.g. a Sony DSC-W1) for £1 or less at car boot sales because no one wants them any longer. Recently I read several articles asking if we have reached "Peak Smartphone" as sales are down. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/02/chart-of-the-day-have-we-reached-peak-smartphone/ I guess many people feel that the one they have at the moment is good enough. I wouldn't worry about Sony as a company. I haven't read anything about peak games console being reached, although it may happen if streamed gaming takes off. I final thought. As far as I know Sony's range of Personal Audio players is at least four time bigger than Apple's. Maybe, like with compact cameras, there is still a big enough replacement market to justify making them. I would guess the profit margin on the top of the range one mentioned in the article is quite significant.
You make many good points, Longman. The one's about cameras are most noteworthy, as I just consolidated and cleared-out a large locker that contained my brother's stuff--which he "No-longer cares about"--and discovered a couple of nice, older-model digital cameras amongst the general "junk". Also, about the smaller model cameras, I hear you as memory of 110 and 35mm sharing the market. I also recall that credit-card thin calculator... and seeing AM/FM-radios go that way, too. Makes you wonder: If they could be madethat small then, how small could they be made now? As for the future of the company, and any advances of any popular technologies, I won't worry... I just wish I could watch local television on my smartphone.
I was thinking about this a bit more. When the Walkman was launched: The LP Vinyl Record was only 31 years old Mainstream Home Computers had only been in the shops two years, and you were very lucky and rich if you could get a floppy drive for one The eight track cartridge had been launched 16 years earlier and was already dying out The compact cassette was the same age So a forty year run of various Walkman models has to be considered a big success.
(Sigh) 8-tracks... one format that never really saw advancement, despite how "advanced" it was in it's time. By that I mean: Why didn't anyone develop a deck with a "fixed" head that changed channels/programs electronically? Listening certainly would've been a more enjoyable experience without the "Ka-chunk!" that occured during the intermission. But I digress. It's just a crazy thought I had, like dubbing my CDs to 8-track in the day, so I could listen to them at work... or running a 3.5mm stereo-to-cassette adaptor in a cassete-to-8-track adaptor to achieve the same. Yeah... I think like that.
