“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
So it would appear that Sony Electronics’ new strategy is to make the new player compatible with the format notoriously referred to as “Stolen”.
I wonder how Sony Records feels about this development.
Why complain? Competition is always good for the consumer… now if they can make 3rd party compatible with iTunes/iTMS that would rock.
Samsug is the world’s biggest consumer electronics maker, not Sony.
Roll on the iPod micro.
That should say Samsung.
I see two problems with this:
One, it’s being offered in Japan only, where Sony is only competing with itself and its MiniDisc player.
Two, have you seen the design? Smaller screen than the iPod, and controls on the left? This guarantees that the only way to handle this is either with two hands or right handed only. I don’t know about any of you, but even as a right-hander, i use my left to control my iPod all the time, and would hate to have to reach across the screen to use that crappy control.
I see this thing dying.
Sony didn’t advertise that the 20 GB NW-HD3 stores 3 times as many MP3’s as the 20 GB iPod!!
All agreed Sony and ALL of the other competitors of Apple’s iPod missed the boat. And the whole reason for this (all the while knowing that the rest of the iPod is also perfection) is Apple’s pantented scrollwheel.
It’s all about the scrollwheel…
I LOVE SONY