“It might have been a coincidence, but it still must have hurt. Sony Corp. last fall booked a Tokyo nightclub for the unveiling of its latest Walkman music players. But halfway around the globe in San Francisco, just hours before Sony turned on the strobe lights, Apple Computer Inc. introduced the business-card-sized iPod nano. Although the nano isn’t aimed at precisely the same market as the new Walkman, many saw the confluence of events as deeply symbolic: Here was the Japanese electronics giant that had pioneered the portable music market 26 years ago taking yet another body blow in a fight that it should have dominated,” BusinessWeek reports. “Today, although iPod is still kicking the stuffing out of Walkman, Sony’s offering is finally putting up a decent fight. In January, Apple had 45% of the Japanese market for digital music players, vs. 15% for Sony. That’s a modest improvement for the Japanese company, from the 53%/11% split a month before the new Walkman hit store shelves, according to research firm BCN Ranking.”
In the United States, Apple’s iPod “has 74% of the U.S. market, compared with Sony’s 2% — and even offerings from smaller rivals such as SanDisk, Creative Technology, and iriver, according to researcher NPD Intellect,” BusinessWeek reports. ‘the new Walkman has some serious disadvantages. About the size of a deck of cards, the $280 NW-A3000 Walkman is bigger than the $300 iPod, but it offers just 20 GB of storage space (enough for about 5,000 songs) compared with the Apple machine’s 30 GB. And Sony’s Connect music site in the U.S. is no match for Apple’s user-friendly iTunes software and music store. “The new Walkman is better than what Sony had before, but I don’t think that many people are going to go out and buy one,” says Ming-Kai Cheng, an analyst at brokerage CLSA. And with the latest iPods offering video, the music-only Walkman has more catching up to do… The iPod’s elegant click-wheel, simple software, and countless adapters to plug into a car or home stereo have helped give Apple an edge, too. In 2005, Apple shipped more than 32 million iPods worldwide, says researcher Gartner Dataquest — seven times Sony’s forecast for the Walkman for its fiscal year ending Mar. 31. Facing numbers like that, even a distant No. 2 might well be considered a victory for Sony.”
Full article here.
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things change……. sorry Sony.
Yes yes. Velly velly solly Sony.
But does this article also show that things are slowing down for the ipod at least in japan? 53% to 45% of the market, but did the market grow and how much? It’s hard to tell with this info.
I think as long as apple continues to be a moving target, adding useful features like video, they’ll continue to lead.
(PS. no need for Asian accent jokes, though)
“Apple’s iPod+iTunes Store ‘kicking the stuffing out of Sony'”
Ewww. What were they stuffed with? Sushi? Bad visual. They are now the knights who say, “so NEE.”
I wike Sony vewy, vewy much.
But I wike Appoo mucha, mucha more.
What do you call a lady with one leg shorter than the other?
Ileene
What do you call a Chinese lady with one leg shorter then the other?
Ireene
Why am I telling jokes in this thread?
I don’t know, but it seemed to fit…
SONY Deserves it, they have been ignorant, they have been abusing me, i was a SONY fan ( still am but only partially )
I was forced to get an ugly black SONY desktop which was heavy as mountain everest.
My bird had a heart attack one day thinking it was a hawk wanting to eat it.
I would have nightmares at nite staring at the black tower on my desk, its just scary.
SONY’s problem is, they ignore the customer, the people in charge just go ” oh okay i like this, make it black ” their designs are pathetic to, remember the last LCD they had ( they still do ) its like a monitor with a jaw touching the desk.. how are you suppose to keep that clean… YUCK
SONY’s technology is good but their arrogance is killing them.
Today i noticed sony is offering a computer replacement program , in which you get to sell your old sony laptop to sony and they give you few bucks.
Which is something cheap companies such as GATEWAY does
SONY is a small company they they are making the same mistakes as a big company such as microsoft, which is unhealthy and will prevent growth.
“My bird had a heart attack one day thinking it was a hawk wanting to eat it.”
That would be an excellent subject for a short film. Or even a Pixar short.
I’ll make the popcorn.
Shame on all of you for your racial slurs. Aren’t tech people supposed to be smart and/or enlightened? This is 1940’s-style xenophobic “humor” that has no place here. Keep your caricatures to yourselves.
“SONY is a small company”
WHAT?!?!? I think not. Sony is a huge conglomerate.
It seems to lack corporate vision currently and plays the catch-up game far too much. At least it is still doing OK in Japan.
lighten up.
mw: try, as in “at least try to lighten up”
Yo, Fwed — Even “Asians” can laugh at themselves. GASP!
I know that’s “shocking” to you, but . . . HORROR! . . . it’s TRUE!!!!
That’s why they call us “round eyes”. Because WE ARE!!
And they say we smell like dairy. Because WE DO!!
And as a round-eyed dairy eater, I think it’s hilarious.
LEARN TO LAUGH AT YOURSELF!!!!!!
Japanese people think they are superrior and they see Americans as ‘dumb people’.
That is why they do not like suggestions and end up coming with stupid designs for Sony
They are like 5 feet tall, when they design a 10 inch laptop, to them its “HUGE”
I think I smell more like plain yogurt. Does that count?
I still like Sony game consoles and TVs.
I am so tired of these wildly varying market share numbers, each one thrown out at fact. Does the iPod have 60%, 70%, 80%? I’ve heard all three number. Sometimes iTMS has 80%, sometimes close to 90%. Yesterday we were hearing that the iPod has 51% of the Japanese market. Today it’s 45%. I don’t know what the hell to believe. Oh well, at least all the numbers are good for Apple.
“I am so tired of these wildly varying market share numbers, each one thrown out at fact.”
Well, as the name implies, market share measures sales within a market. How you define ‘the market’ is up to the measurer and they can choose to include or exclude numbers. In theory, it’s up to the press to tell people what they have included and excluded, but they might require complicated information that their readers won’t understad, so it gets left out.
For example, I’ve seen measurements of the “hard-drive based MP3 players” showing the iPod have more than 80% of the market. That doesn’t include Flash-based players, though. So the press will report the iPod as having “80% market share.” Same with computer market share. As Apple’s U.S. market share has increased, some reporters have started listing Apple’s world-wide marketshare in order to say, “See? It’s a tiny number!”
Oh, and for the joke-tellers, anybody remember the movie “Crazy People”? The ad at the end for Sony?
Sony: Because Americans are just too damn tall.
Also, from “Crazy People”:
“You may think phone service stinks since deregulation, but don’t mess with us, because we’re all you’ve got. In fact, if we fold, you’ll have no damn phones. AT&T – we’re tired of taking your crap!”
Sound like another company we know?
Macaday wrote:
> Yes yes. Velly velly solly Sony.
I’m Vietnamese, and my foreign language is Japanese, so I’d like to offer a little clarification here.
One of the differences between Japanese and Chinese is that Japanese has the “R” character/sound but no “L,” whereas Chinese is the opposite, having an “L” but no “R”…
Therefore, Japanese people could say “sorry” but not “Sally,” vs. Chinese people who could say “Sally” but not say “sorry”… Japanese also does not have a “V” so they use a “B” to get close to it…
Therefore, if “Yes yes. Velly velly solly Sony.” is suppose to be said by a Japanese person, it should be more accurately written, “Hai, Hai. Beri beri sari Soni,” or “Hai, Hai, gomen nasai Soni (Gambatte nee)”…
When you try to make fun of other people w/o knowing very much about them, you end up making yourself look pretty stupid…
ds.
Los Angeles, CA
Even though Apple is clobbering Sony in the portable media player space, Steve Jobs still took a moment during his Town Hall presentation to say that Sony’s Bravia TVs were very nice. It looks like Apple is still doing everything it can to court Sony and bring it over to Apple’s way of doing things.
boyweho:
“When you try to make fun of other people w/o knowing very much about them, you end up making yourself look pretty stupid…”
Ha ha ha.. classic!
Thank you Fred, for your enlightened comment. And &%*#($#& to ChunkyMonkey and NeverFade. I am Asian, and yes, I was very offended. I wonder if those racists also tell racist jokes about African Americans.