Sony admits slow Walkman sales
According to a WSJ story (registration req. to read the article—ATRACLife has republished it), Sony admitted to reporters they failed to meet the initial sales target for their new line of models introduced over the past year. Sony president Ryoji Chubachi, who was quoted saying “We miscalculated with the Walkman”, declined to point out a ‘bounce back’ strategy (was there ever one?).
Q1 2006 finds Apple with nearly 3/4ths of the flash-based MP3 players market—in comparison Sony’s share of the pie is LESS than 10%. Chubachi says they want to come out with products that are uniquely Sony—the NW-E005 (pictured) that was introduced in Japan back in June was greeted with better-than-expected sales. Chairman and Chief Executive Howard Stringer knows that the ‘software+hardware’ synergy is where it’s at when he says: “We need to marry software engineers to product designers at the beginning of the creation of new products”.
The question is whether it’s too late for Sony to bounce back, especially now that Microsoft is preparing a big entrance in this arena with Zune.
Before leaving the site, have a look at our most popular entries:
- Review: FixTunes (September 14, 2006)
- Apple Lossless offerings from the iTMS not likely—for now (June 28, 2006)
- Review: Datasafe oomi (June 7, 2006)
- HOWTO: Move your iTunes music while preserving library data (May 11, 2006)
- Batteries 101 (May 8, 2006)
- Presentation: iPod Hi-Fi, plus a few thoughts (March 2, 2006)
- Presentation/Review: Creative Zen Vision:M (December 9, 2005)
- Review: Alegria Audio Ling bookshelf speaker system (November 9, 2005)
- HOWTO: Put together a $3K audiophile CD player for $555 (October 20, 2005)
- HOWTO: Build the CMoy pocket amplifier (October 16, 2005)