Walkman Outsells iPod in Japan–Sort Of
by John Paczkowski
Posted on September 3, 2009 at 11:07 AM PT
Sony’s Walkman outsold Apple’s iPod in Japan for the first time in more than four years last week, according to a report from research outfit BCN.
The Japanese company’s share of the portable music player market rose to 43 percent, surpassing Apple’s 42.1 percent and ending the iPod’s 241-week run as Japan’s top portable media player.
A noteworthy victory for the Japanese electronics giant, but one that says more about just how far the once great company has fallen than anything else. That it took Sony (SNE) this long to unseat Apple (AAPL) in its home market is astonishing–all the more so given the vast success of the Walkman and the mindshare it once commanded.
And one could argue that Sony hasn’t actually beaten Apple at all. BCN’s survey didn’t include the iPhone because it views that device as a phone. But obviously, it’s an iPod as well–BCN notes that the handset has clearly cannibalized iPod sales. Had BCN classified the iPhone as the media player that it is, Apple would almost certainly have maintained its lead over Sony in the Japanese market.
Comments
I have purchased three iPods (never the top-line ones though) and given them as gifts. As I don’t like wearing ear-buds in a car and no longer commute on a bus or rail system there is almost never a time when wearing headphones is all that desirable. hence my total usage time for all my iPod devices is measured in minutes, not hours.
My Kindle has turned into a surprising good carry around the house “boom-box” though.
I guess my point is that I wish these tech companies would focus more on making devices with useful properties (device size, screen size, external speakers or not, daylight viewable or not, medium to long battery life, wireless features, and so on) and let them get used as users want to use them.
More and more these devices, small as they are, are general purpose computers and whether they are used for music, reading, video or blog editing is simply a matter of software (and hopefully not just hardware maker software).
Yet, it still seems that it is as if the industry was selling a desktop computer but calling it a “printer driver”. In this paradigm you would need one desktop computer to drive your printer, another to hold your files, another to hook up to a network.
The most important high-tech tool has become a bag to carry all these things in.
Posted by Mac Beach at September 3rd, 2009 at 2:01 pm