Sony Debuts 20 Gigabyte Walkman to Silence IPod
Thu 1 July, 2004 04:35
LONDON/TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony Corp. unveiled plans on Thursday to launch a Walkman digital music player capable of storing 13,000 songs, aiming to reclaim the top spot in a market now dominated by Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod.
The Japanese consumer electronics maker said the 20-gigabyte device, its second hard-disk drive gadget aimed at unseating Apple, will be launched on July 10 in Japan, by mid-August in the United States and in September in Europe.
It is expected to sell for around 53,000 yen ($487) in Japan and less than $400 in the United States, Sony said, undercutting Apple's 40-gigabyte device that sells for $499 and can hold up to 10,000 songs.
Dubbed the Network Walkman NW-HD1, it is the first major upgrade to the legendary Walkman brand on its 25th anniversary.
It joins the "Vaio pocket," a digital player Sony unveiled in Japan in May. The Vaio pocket has a similar storage capacity and also carries a 53,000 yen price tag.
Sony views a high-capacity, hard-drive player as a crucial addition to boost usage of its online music store Sony Connect. It is hoping the cachet of the Walkman brand name will help it close the gap on the iPod and Apple's iTunes download service.
Since Apple launched iPod three years ago it has dominated the digital music player market, outselling all competitors by nearly a two-to-one margin. Apple has an even larger lead in downloads, selling over 85 million digital tracks.
"This very clearly completes the range for us," said Robert Ashcroft, senior vice president of Sony network services Europe, a division of Sony Electronics.
Ashcroft said Sony Connect was due to be launched in Europe next week, beginning with the French market. He said that with the NW-HD1, Sony now had over a dozen digital players compatible with Sony Connect.
Assembling a large installed base of consumers with digital music players is considered crucial to survival in the brutally competitive digital download market.
As with Sony's other players, the NW-HD1 plays songs in the company's proprietary ATRAC format only, meaning it is not compatible with any other online stores and cannot play tunes in the popular MP3 format.
Sony, well-regarded by gadget lovers for its design prowess, said the NW-HD1 will be the smallest 20-GB player on the market. It is slightly larger than a credit card and less than half an inch.
On the size of the drive, Sony said it packed more songs in a smaller storage space by using advanced compression technology.
Sony said Toshiba Corp. developed the hard drives while the rest of the gadget was designed by Sony engineers.
The battery lasts 30 hours, at least three times longer than the iPod's -- a selling point that Sony plans to play up in promoting the device.
The NW-HD1 also employs shock-resistant technology that protects the hard drive if is dropped.
"We couldn't come up with something using the Walkman brand until it survived the 1 meter (3 ft 3.37 in) drop test," said Ashcroft. (Additional reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka) ($1=108.78 Yen)
New Sony Walkman to Rival Apple Player Jun 30, 2004
Cd walkman - Compare up-to-the-minute prices from hundreds of trusted stores
shopper.zdnet.com
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - The iPod may finally have a serious competitor. The company that brought us the Walkman is entering the hard disk music player arena now dominated by its trendsetting-rival Apple Computer Inc.
Sony Corp. (SNE) plans to unveil Thursday its newest Walkman, a palm-sized, aluminum-encased player that can store up to 13,000 songs on its 20-gigabyte, 1.8-inch hard drive, and promises 30 hours of playback on a rechargeable battery.
Weighing 3.8 ounces, the new Sony NW-HD1 is smaller and lighter than the iPod's 15-, 20- and 40-gigabyte models, and just slightly larger than the 4-gigabyte iPod Mini. Sony claims the portable player is the smallest of its class.
The product will be available in mid-August for less than $400, Sony said.
Then the face-off will begin.
'I'd call it an iPod challenger, and one that will keep Apple on its toes,' said Richard Doherty, an industry analyst with The Envisioneering Group.
Apple was not the first to introduce a high-capacity hard-disk portable music player, but its October 2001 launch of the iPod defined the market. The product's runaway success - with an estimated 3 million units sold - has since drawn other rivals, including Dell and Samsung.
Still, Apple leads with about a 60 percent share of the hard-disk drive player segment in the United States, and about 30 percent of all portable music players, according to Michael Goodman, an analyst at The Yankee Group market research firm.
Sony's sleek new Walkman is a highly-anticipated and belated entry but will likely be Apple's fiercest competitor yet, Doherty predicts.
'These are two aging entrepreneurs who are incredibly well-driven internally to exceed what they did just the month before,' he said. 'It'll be great to finally have these two in the same playing field.'
Of course, portable music isn't new to Sony. It pioneered the category when it introduced the original Walkman in 1979.
But in the past few years, analysts say Sony lost some of its luster as it aggressively pushed mini disc-based music players, and sales - except for Japan - fell short of expectations.
'Apple's iPod came out, and it was so successful, it really forced Sony's hand,' Goodman said.
