Sony Corp. is in hot pursuit with its latest range of Walkman products.
United States of America (Press Release) November 5, 2007 --
According to market research firm BCN Inc., the iPod has had about a 50 percent share of the portable music player market in Japan since 2005. The second-place Walkman had about a 20 percent share of the market in 2006, but has closed the gap to nearly 30 percent since April this year.
The iPod is known for its elegant design and user friendliness. Users can use Apple's iTunes software to select and purchase more than 5 million music and video tracks.
Masamitsu Sakurai, chairman of the Japan Association of Corporate Executives, is also a fan of the iPod. He said he edits the track sequence on his computer, and listens to the music from his iPod on his home or car stereo.
In September, Apple released the iPod Nano with video capability, and the iPod Touch, utilizing a touch screen control panel. An eight-gigabyte memory Nano retails at a nominal price of 23,800 yen, and an eight-gigabyte Touch is on the market at 36,800 yen.
The extensive iPod range includes the 15-gram one-gigabyte Shuffle and the 160-gigabyte Classic.
Sony is pushing the quality of the Walkman's Sony-developed acoustic technology. Music can be recorded onto it directly from a CD or MD player without the need for a computer. Song titles can be searched using kana syllabary and the accompanying software has been improved.
The Walkman S-Series was released Oct. 20, with its selling point a noise-canceling function that cuts out about one-quarter of surrounding noise. The eight-gigabyte memory model comes at a nominal price of 27,000 yen, and many are comparing it with the iPod Nano.
Sony is also on the offensive with the mid-November release of its Walkman A-series. It will be capable of receiving "one-seg" digital terrestrial video broadcasts for personal digital assistants and comes in a number of memory sizes--from four to 16 gigabytes. It will be priced in the 30,000 yen to 45,000 yen range.
Sony's proprietary Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding (ATRAC) system to compress music files is unique to the Walkman brand.
However, with the iPod still dominating the market, in spring 2006 Sony made the Walkman compatible with the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) protocol found in Apple and other systems (excluding copyright-protected files). Despite this, it is not easy to lure customers used to Apple's software over to Sony products.
Consumers are not selecting portable stereos on features alone. Instead, they are now considering many factors, including the software used in the devices, before making the purchase.
Author: Shigeki Kurokawa
Source: http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/
The iPod is known for its elegant design and user friendliness. Users can use Apple's iTunes software to select and purchase more than 5 million music and video tracks.
Masamitsu Sakurai, chairman of the Japan Association of Corporate Executives, is also a fan of the iPod. He said he edits the track sequence on his computer, and listens to the music from his iPod on his home or car stereo.
In September, Apple released the iPod Nano with video capability, and the iPod Touch, utilizing a touch screen control panel. An eight-gigabyte memory Nano retails at a nominal price of 23,800 yen, and an eight-gigabyte Touch is on the market at 36,800 yen.
The extensive iPod range includes the 15-gram one-gigabyte Shuffle and the 160-gigabyte Classic.
Sony is pushing the quality of the Walkman's Sony-developed acoustic technology. Music can be recorded onto it directly from a CD or MD player without the need for a computer. Song titles can be searched using kana syllabary and the accompanying software has been improved.
The Walkman S-Series was released Oct. 20, with its selling point a noise-canceling function that cuts out about one-quarter of surrounding noise. The eight-gigabyte memory model comes at a nominal price of 27,000 yen, and many are comparing it with the iPod Nano.
Sony is also on the offensive with the mid-November release of its Walkman A-series. It will be capable of receiving "one-seg" digital terrestrial video broadcasts for personal digital assistants and comes in a number of memory sizes--from four to 16 gigabytes. It will be priced in the 30,000 yen to 45,000 yen range.
Sony's proprietary Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding (ATRAC) system to compress music files is unique to the Walkman brand.
However, with the iPod still dominating the market, in spring 2006 Sony made the Walkman compatible with the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) protocol found in Apple and other systems (excluding copyright-protected files). Despite this, it is not easy to lure customers used to Apple's software over to Sony products.
Consumers are not selecting portable stereos on features alone. Instead, they are now considering many factors, including the software used in the devices, before making the purchase.
Author: Shigeki Kurokawa
Source: http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/
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