Sony's New Walkman beaten with a Nano stick

Sony announced yesterday their new Walkman, striking images of the portable brick that was popular back in the 1980's. This announcement of course, has nothing to do with that old, market dominating, portable player. Sony's time has come and gone in the portable music market they created 25 years ago, fumbling to grasp what it was that customers wanted in this new, digital era. Apple is the new crown king of that market with its beautifully designed iPod MP3 player (74% of the entire MP3 player market) and its companion software and online music store, iTunes (85% of the global digital music market). Though Apple was not the first player in this new digital music realm, they redefined and brought to the masses innovation and ease of use previously unheard of in this space. Also, with the iTunes Music Store, they have become the music industry's savior in the P2P, File swapping world of the Pirates of the Caribbeanet.

Apple's most popular model and therefore the number one MP3 player in the world is the iPod Mini,and every single competitor, including Sony has been struggling to copy what it is that makes the Mini so popular. But Apple has decided not to run the conservative plays of a market leader, and instead on Wednesday discontinued their number one player to introduce a new model, the iPod Nano, "1,000 songs in your pocket. Impossibly small." It's thinner than a number 2 pencil and considerably smaller even than Sony's new Walkman, yet it is a full featured iPod, with color screen, photo viewing capability, and that wonderful click-wheel iPod users adore.

Sony's Thursday announcement was dwarfed by Apple's Wednesday surprise. Everyone thought that Apple's Music Event was to introduce Motorola's new iTunes phone, the ROCKR, which they did along with the new version of iTunes, but other announcements followed, including that 30% of all cars sold in the U.S. would include iPod integration and a special iChat appearance by Madonna to announce the inclusion of all her music in the iTunes Music Store. It was the final announcement which blew the industry away, though, the iPod Nano, forcing Sony's Koichiro Tsujino to comment at a news conference, "I understand a certain company made an announcement...We will accelerate our challenge with these new models."



Trying to challenge Apple's dominance is no easy task, and recently Rio, an important player in the flash MP3 space, has exited the market, no longer able to compete. Creative is Apple's biggest challenger with its Zen player, yet continues to lag behind. Sony has attempted to follow the Apple model with its Connect music store, an obvious copy of iTunes, and it's new Walkman which does play MP3's (earlier Sony players did not include the important capacity to play the MP3 format, a mistake they will not soon forget) in addition to Sony's unsuccessful ATRAC format, but they lack the coolness and status Sony once commanded, looking more like wannabes.



To be fair, the new Walkman does have a more attractive design than other models on the market, and the organic EL display integrated into the casing does look pretty cool, but unfortunately it's just not as beautiful and efficiently designed as the iPod. It doesn't look uniquely cool. Also, the Bose iPod speakers knock-off, shown with the announcement looks like it was unattractively designed for a different player. To top it all off, the player is larger and more expensive than the iPod Nano in equivalent capacities.

The Walkman works with the Connect store, but not with iTunes, which is another deterrent to many buyers. Sony was offered a partnership in iTunes development, a way to guarantee its compatibility with the store and Apple's Fairplay (a digital rights management (DRM) music protection scheme), but Sony declined the offer, preferring to develop its own Connect store and now iTunes wannabe software. iTunes of course, has 85% of the global market, leaving Sony's Connect to share in the remaining 15% with Napster, Real's Raphsody, and all the others.

Apple not only leads the market in sales, but it leads the market in design, innovation, ease of use, quality, and the all-important cool factor. Sony had made some inroads in its local Japanese market, but that was before iTunes availability in Japan and still had only reached 27% of the flash player market at the time. As long as Apple continues to take risks and design products like the new Nano, it will be a gargantuan task for Sony or Creative to keep up.

Long ago, Steve Jobs said that he wanted Apple to be like Sony. It seems his prediction came true, and now, I'm sure that it's Sony, that wishes it was Apple.

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Apple's Models:
iPod Shuffle (no display): Available NOW! Models: 512MB or 120 songs for $99. 1GB or 240 songs for $129.
New iPod Nano (black or white, color display, photos): Available NOW! Models: 2GB or 500 song capacity for $199. 4GB or 1000 song capacity for $249
iPod (color display, photos): Available NOW! Models: 20GB or 5000 songs for $299. 60GB or 15,000 songs for $399.
iPod U2 Special Edition (black with red click wheel, color display, photos): Available NOW! Models: 20GB or 5000 songs for $329. Includes a 50$ coupon towards the purchase of The Complete U2 collection in the iTunes Music Store as well as a poster.

Sony's Models:
New Walkman: Available starting November.
Flash memory based models (include FM radio): 512MB for 22,000¥ ($200 USD), 1GB for 27,000¥ ($246 USD), and 2GB for 32,000¥ ($292 USD).
Hard drive based models: 6 GB for 30,000¥ ($274 USD) and 20 GB for 35,000¥ ($319 USD).

NOTE: Japanese Yen to U.S. Dollar conversion based on exchange rate on September 9, 2005.