Just weeks after the much-hyped launch of the Walkman Phone, Sony has announced a new Network Walkman range whose features, it says, raises the technological bar yet another notch.
Sony's greatest triumph, the Walkman, essentially created the market for portable music players when it launched in 1979. In the 25 years that followed, the Walkman has evolved from cassette-based, to CD-, mini-disc, Flash- and hard disc-based. To date, the Japanese corporation has launched over 1,100 models of Walkman-branded products and shipped more than 340 million units cumulatively.
That said, Sony has stumbled in recent years, allowing competitors to surpass it. Launched in 2001, Apple's iPod defined a new market for digital music devices. One of its strongest features was the accompanying iTunes service, which allowed consumers to download music easily on to their iPods from the internet.
Sony fought back with Connect -- but this was deemed by critics as too little, too late.
The true extent of iPod's vault over Sony is best told in figures: in 2004, global sales quadrupled to 4.4 million from 939,000 a year earlier.
Sony's new Network Walkman range is aimed at battling the Flash-based iPod shuffle: the entry-level NW-E100 series and the high-end NW-E500 series, to be launched in Asia this and next month respectively offer memory capacities ranging from 256 MB to 1 GB, battery life of 50 hours, three minutes of charging time for three hours of playback, and comes in a range of hip colours.
Analysts welcome the launch, but the environment for the Walkman has changed dramatically. "The damage has been done -- Sony can't depend on the Walkman brand name to sell the products anymore -- Apple is now the brand in digital audio," one declared.
Competition has also "spread to a lot of other successful Flash-based music products in the marketplace". Meanwhile, the Walkman Phone will offer Sony another chance of meeting its rival on yet another turf: a Motorola-branded cell phone that works directly with the iTunes Music Store is due out later this year.
That said, Sony has stumbled in recent years, allowing competitors to surpass it. Launched in 2001, Apple's iPod defined a new market for digital music devices. One of its strongest features was the accompanying iTunes service, which allowed consumers to download music easily on to their iPods from the internet.
Sony fought back with Connect -- but this was deemed by critics as too little, too late.
The true extent of iPod's vault over Sony is best told in figures: in 2004, global sales quadrupled to 4.4 million from 939,000 a year earlier.
Sony's new Network Walkman range is aimed at battling the Flash-based iPod shuffle: the entry-level NW-E100 series and the high-end NW-E500 series, to be launched in Asia this and next month respectively offer memory capacities ranging from 256 MB to 1 GB, battery life of 50 hours, three minutes of charging time for three hours of playback, and comes in a range of hip colours.
Analysts welcome the launch, but the environment for the Walkman has changed dramatically. "The damage has been done -- Sony can't depend on the Walkman brand name to sell the products anymore -- Apple is now the brand in digital audio," one declared.
Competition has also "spread to a lot of other successful Flash-based music products in the marketplace". Meanwhile, the Walkman Phone will offer Sony another chance of meeting its rival on yet another turf: a Motorola-branded cell phone that works directly with the iTunes Music Store is due out later this year.
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