Sony discountinued the Walkman

Jstas

No, not 15 years ago...today.

http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/10/22/an-era-ends-sony-stops-manufacturing-cassette-walkmans/

From Slashdot:

...after selling 200,020,000 units worldwide since its inception over thirty years ago, Sony has announced that it is pulling the plug on the manufacture and sales of the Walkman, the world's first portable (mass-produced) stereo. Magnetic cassette technology had been around since 1963, when Philips first created it for use by secretaries and journalists, but on July 1, 1979, Sony Corp. introduced the Sony Walkman TPS-L2, a 14 ounce, blue-and-silver, portable cassette player with chunky buttons, headphones, a leather case, and a second earphone jack so that two people could listen in at once. The Walkman was originally introduced in the US as the "Sound-About" and in the UK as the "Stowaway," but coming up with new, uncopyrighted names in every country it was marketed in proved costly so Sony eventually decided on "Walkman" as a play on the Sony Pressman, a mono cassette recorder the first Walkman prototype was based on. The popularity of Sony's device — and those by brands like Aiwa, Panasonic and Toshiba who followed in Sony's lead — helped the cassette tape outsell vinyl records for the first time in 1983 as Sony continued to roll out variations on its theme with over 300 different Walkman models, adding such innovations as AM/FM receivers, bass boost and auto-reverse on later models and even producing a solar-powered Walkman, water-resistant Sport Walkman and Walkmen with two cassette drives."

I wonder how many people's first audio system was a Walkman?

You know what I liked best about the Walkman? Not only did it play tapes but you had a radio tuner. Good luck finding that on portable CD players and MP3 players today. It's a pretty rare option in my experience.

audiobliss

Both my portable CDP and cassette player have AM/FM radios, and my CDP actually has a weatherband, too. However, they're probably both at least 5 years old. They're Panasonic, and they've served me very well.

bigaudiofanatic

ipod plays radio, my droid does radio as well.

Sherardp

Now if they would stop making Mini Disc everything would be great. Japan has to be the only country still using MD. They still put those things in cars for crying out loud.

brettw22

Never thought of 'discounted' and 'discontinued' being combined into one word.....now I know what it would look like.........

mhardy6647

I remember hearing the original Walkman in the late 1970s ('79, I guess, based on the OP above) at High Fidelity Centre in Baltimore, MD.

polkatese

brettw22 wrote: »

Never thought of 'discounted' and 'discontinued' being combined into one word.....now I know what it would look like.........

LOL. Didn't see that coming..

cfrizz

I had this for years at work, I gave it to a coworker when we left. It had cd, tape & radio.

http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-RX-ES29-Portable-Cassette-Worldwide/dp/B0044A9KLC/ref=pd_sxp_grid_i_0_2

And my Sansa mp3 player has a radio. I never use it, but it has it.

ESavinon

RIP. My first cd player was a Portable Sony cd player.