“Sony Corp. unveiled its first MP3-compatible, hard disk Walkman music player on Tuesday in an attempt to recover ground lost to Apple Computer’s iPod. The world’s biggest consumer electronics maker aims to reclaim the market for portable and personal music devices, which it helped to launch 25 years ago with its first Walkman,” Lucas van Grinsven reports for Reuters.
“The product will be available in Britain before Christmas at 249 pounds ($462.70) and elsewhere in Europe in early 2005 at 369 euros ($489). The new hard disk player is the successor of Sony’s first hard disk Walkman, which it introduced this summer but which can play back only music compressed with Sony’s proprietary Atrac software. Atrac is the format Sony uses on its Internet music shop Connect, which opened in Europe this summer,” van Grinsven reports.
“Putting MP3 playback capability in the new Sony Walkman NW-HD3 means consumers can directly import and export tracks in the MP3 format, which is more popular than Atrac. Sony Europe President Chris Deering said the new Walkman was important to the success of Connect, whose performance to date he described as ‘not an entrenched recognisable service,'” van Grinsven reports. “Sony President Kunitake Ando said this summer, at the launch of the new Walkman, that he was determined to take the spotlight in the market for portable music players away from iPod. ‘I don’t know if we can take this market back in a year … But this launch is our message that we will work hard to put an end to the dominance by just one company,’ Ando then said.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Good luck to Kunitake Ando – he’s gonna need a boatload of four-leaf clovers on this one. The phrase “too little, too late” doesn’t do Sony’s situation justice. The headline we’ve chosen should tell you just about all you need to know: people want iPods, not NW-HD3s.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Apple embarrassing Sony as iPods take Japan by storm – November 28, 2004
um….yeah….good luck with that
In a related story, Sony’s Kunitake Ando was quoted as saying, “Yeah? So what if this our one and only MP3-compatible, hard disk Walkman music player? We’re back in the game now baby, and we’re gonna kick some iPod ass!”
Umm, yeah, right.
What size HD? The price seems a bit steep. If a person wants an iPod, they might settle for a Sony if the price were much lower than the iPod price. But if you are gonna rack up a steep price like that then you’re not going to convert someone that wants the best.
Way back when, Sony had the market all to itself when they introduced the Soundabout, renamed the Walkman 6 months later. BUT, others eventually caught up and surpassed the originator by selling cassette and then CD portables at lower prices. Most of those companies, like Sony, could do this as they owned the manufacturing facilities. Eventually, Apple will lose much of its market share and to add insult to injury, they won’t be able to compete price-wise because they do not own the factories to make the Pod’s.
Nevertheless, Apple will continue their lead into 2006, but beyond that I don’t know. They should enjoy it while they can.
“not an entrenched recognisable service”
another phrase for “failure”
lol
Has anybody read “The Perfect Chocolate” yet?
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments_opinion/4367/
Did you note that they are avoiding the US? Maybe they think the iPod is not as entrenched on the Planet Europa as here in the Good Old U.S.A. I smell fear in the hearts of Sony Executives. Sir Howard Stringer, your C.V. needs to be updated.
Since the article is basically nonsense, I would just like to note that this is the first article that has ever displayed correctly since I started visiting this site. The ads and crap are on the right and left and the whole page fits in my window without needing to scroll horizontally. I hope it keeps working.
pkradd:
The thing is, there ARE lower priced “better” featured HD and Flash-based players on the market, yet the iPod still rules. You can’t forget that the iPod was NOT the first player of it’s kind; it was the first of it’s kind that people REALLY wanted to own.
I don’t think the iPod will hold onto it’s 80+ % of the market past 2006, but it’s lead will continue to be substancial IMO
It’s a 20 GB drive and it will cost 20 Euros more than the 20 GB iPod. Which, btw., should be replaced with a 30 GB base model by then. The mini will probably sport a 6 GB drive and it will be 110 Euros cheaper. Sorry, Sony, to clunky, too late. This christmas will add another 4 million iPods to the user base.
And can you imagine anyone saying: “Wow, cool, you’ve got the new NW-HD3!”??
iPod is huge in the UK. Not sure about the rest of Europe. They’re not going to do much with that catchy name. Essentially they need to market it as the Sony iPod, but, of course, they can’t, so they’ll fail. At least for now.
Oh, and it’s 40 Euros more than the 20 GB iPod (369 vs. 329). Really a no brainer.
” Eventually, Apple will lose much of its market share and to add insult to injury, they won’t be able to compete price-wise because they do not own the factories to make the Pod’s. “
Actually, almost NONE of the consumer electronics companies operate their own factories anymore. They all use assemblers in Taiwan, China, Phillipines. etc.. This includes Sony and the other Japanese and Korean electronics companies.
The shift from their own factories to offshore contract assemblers is the main reason that Apples products are competetively priced now compared to the past.
In any case, I’ve used the Sony and it sucks for several reasons (ease of use, tactile impression, software integration), so any debate about a threat is somewhat academic.
The iPod only rules in the HD domain. And they are the current glamour toy for consumers. But, consumers who buy their iPods will soon see that others have them as well and the cachet of being one of the few will turn into just another of the many. Then people will start looking elsewhere for alternative players. (Already there seems to be indications that the 20 and 40 Gig standard iPod is not selling as well as the mini and iPod photo and U2 versions.)
Flash players have the other 80 to 90 percent of the marketplace in sales. It is important for Apple to get into that area… and it seems they are going to. But, eventually as all things do happen, they won’t be the big boy in the marketplace. As long as they outsource the manufacturing Apple will always have higher prices. And, other HD players will eventually find their stride. Sony’s newest is a step in the right direction, but like Panasonic and others who entered the “Walkman” market, it took them several years to catch up with Sony and surpass them.
The present belongs to Apple, but the future will not be so easy.
Sony can lick my big brown salty chocolate balls.
They are so done…and I love to see these morons scramble to play catch up.
“Okay boys, here’s what we are going to do, we are going to make an iPod like device and use some proprietary format to lock people in like Apple. Oh wait a minute…that didn’t work, okay…let’s rerelease it with MP3 support so that people will buy it…..what do you mean people still won’t buy it…but what if we charge more than the iPod…that will surely make people think it is a valuable pricey must have…no? Damn…what do you mean we did not have one single hit on our online music catalog….”
I’m almost certain the conversations went something like that…..
K
I think Mohamad Ali has a better shot at reclaiming his title than Sony.
pkradd makes some good pionts about once everyone has an iPod it will lose some appeal. However, I think Apple has proven they are not just sitting around waiting for the sales to role in. They will stay a few steps ahead of everyone else in creating that new must-have exclusive item.
“Putting MP3 playback capability in the new Sony Walkman NW-HD3 means consumers can directly import and export tracks in the MP3 format, which is more popular than Atrac. “
.JPG is a more popular audio format than ATRAC. Who are they kidding with this? Now their Walkman can play TWO whole formats? Well, at least they didn’t add support for WMV.
I don’t recall the last numbers I saw on the MP3 player market, but are you sure that flash-based players are 80-90 percent? As stated, Apple is rumored to be about to enter the flash market. If they can price pretty close to competitive, you may just see all that market share dumping their $80, 256K Creative junk and purchasing a $119 Apple 512K iPod micro and re-rip all their music to AAC and iTunes. The constant knock on iPod is that they had no flash-based player and “everyone” wants a low-cost flash player. Well, “everyone” may be getting their wish shortly, and if they do, seems to me that Apple is positioned to take that entire market by storm. Imagine if Dell, Creative, Sony and all the other little fish suddenly start losing sales in the flash market; they already can’t compete in the HD based market, but now they suddenly can’t compete in their bread-and-butter flash space.
Normally, I don’t support the 200-pound gorilla, but Apple has simply out engineered all its competitors as well as designed with the end user in mind. Sony is just on the wrong road�too bad there’s no off-ramp.
Opps.
256K and 512K should have been 256MB and 512MB.
I doubt any compression is that good!!
yawn.. declaring war?
okay NOW you’ve declared war.. hurry up sony.. Creative already declared a simpering offensive a couple weeks ago.. you’re losing ground!!
paTHETIC!
Well as soon as people buy songs at the iTMS they won’t be ABLE to switch to a Zen iPod wannabe or a Sony iPod wannabe.. so, meh.
I wonder if Apple will actually hinder PSP sales then…
Why the FSCK did Sony refuse Apple way back when.. what fscking morons..
“As long as they outsource the manufacturing Apple will always have higher prices.”
Are you on crack? Why do you think people outsource? BECAUSE IT IS CHEAPER! It is far more expensive to manufacture in the US.
Apple can ask (and get) higher prices because they are flat out better products.
I didn’t buy my iPod because it is “in” to do so or any other lame reason like that. I bought an iPod because I wanted to take my music with me and the iPod was the best way to do tht. It’s all about the music.
Sony has a lot of marketing and distribution muscle in Japan and that should help them some in this struggle. However, they have a bit of a rep for making products that break easily and that won’t help.
Also just because Sony does it definately does not guarantee success. Just look at betamax. And that was even a better product than VHS! Not a situation where they are scrambling just to achieve equivalency like they are here.
This report surprises me.
The sony Walkman (NW HD1) is already for sale here in Europe, and is advertised as an mp3 player. The ads say that it can play mp3s.
Liers!
The iPod has something like 70% of the entire MP3 player market, and 90% of the HD based players.