Sony Walkman dethrones the iPod in Japan

In the U.S., "iPod" is pretty much synonymous with "MP3 player." How many people do you know who own anything else? It's the same in Japan, but times could be a-changin'. See, the iPod has finally be out-sold, and it was beat by the venerable Sony Walkman.

Research firm BCN has been keeping tabs on monthly MP3 player sales in Japan since 2001, and, since then, Sony — Japan's biggest name in consumer electronics — has not been able to outperform the iPod. Sony did actually manage to outsell it for one week last September, but fell behind for the month.

It's a rather big deal, then, that Sony's new Walkman S line, released in May, managed to pull into the lead for the entirety of a month. As you can see from the picture above, the Walkman S certainly owes a great deal to the iPod design-wise, though a win's a win.

It makes you think. Is there going to come a day where we don't think of an iPod as the MP3 player? Is that even possible? Maybe cellphones and MP3 players will continue to merge to a point where we no longer think of them as separate gadgets anymore.

Can I say I'm a bit surprised?

Though those players look pretty nice, I have to say.

Well its good to flesh some competition into the field. Maybe it will spread here and Apple will stop raping us up the asses with prices and shitty policy to compete.

Yeah, definitely, but I don't know the demographics in Japan, so perhaps we North Americans are a lot more fanboy-ish than they are. Then again, they are more friendly toward Sony.

Depends how you spin it. Make it the cool alternative to the big pretentious company that is apple. Or atleast make people believe that. That is what apple did to Microsoft.

I suppose it is effective free economy here at work in the end, even if it involves manipulation of the crowds (wait, who am I kidding, we always do that).