Sony closes its Walkman factory in Japan and moves out

Since the
original cassette tape based Walkman launched in 1979, Sony has been manufacturing its Walkman products ever since in Japan.  Back in the 80's, Sony lead the portable music player market with its cassette Walkman, however once digital audio players took off, Sony lost the market to competitors, particularly the iPod which clearly leads the
market.  They have struggled many times with all sorts
of different digital players, including new casing designs and even ultra long
battery runtimes, however they all failed to do as well as Sony wanted. 

So, in an
aim to cut costs as it struggles to compete with rival products, Sony is moving its Walkman product production to plants within Malaysia and China and will close its Japan Walkman factory in March.  Since the Factory first opened, Sony has developed five different Walkman products - Cassette players (which originally lead the market), CD players, MiniDisc players, flash based digital audio players and HDD based digital audio players.  The HDD based Walkmans were the only last remaining Walkman products being produced by the factory and their production has already been stopped.

Do you remember the Walkman? Chances are you probably do (unless you're barely legal, and then you probably don't remember records, Pong, or life before remote controls, either). For a long time, the Walkman was the portable music player that captured the imagination of the roller-skating, leg warmer-wearing, Flashdance-obsessed masses. And it was, of course, all the handiwork of Japan's Sony that launched the revolutionary music player back in 1979. If I wanted to be dramatic, I could proclaim the end of an era, seeing as how Sony will no longer manufacture its Walkman product line in its native Japan. It's no secret that the Walkman lost its street cred quite some time ago, and when it comes to revolutionary music players, Apple's iPod is it right now. And of course, it's no secret that while companies like Dell and Creative have competing music players, the company that probably has the biggest case of iPod envy is Sony. Some history on the Sony Walkman can be found here.

Even though Sony Electronics and Sony BMG are two different entities, unfortunately Sony BMG's very bad publicity over its anti-piracy measures going seriously wrong is in turn giving bad reputation for Sony Electronics.  As a result, this in turn is likely affecting the sales of its Walkman products.  Finally, even Sony Electronics is strong into its anti-piracy measures as we can see from its Super Audio-CD format, Blu-ray backing and even its earlier digital audio players which lacked MP3 support.

Source: The Motley Fool