Walkman

Walkman [ wɔ kmən ː ] is a trademark of Sony for a portable music player ( inter alia in the form of cassettes, CDs, mini discs or MP3 and video files). In the German language, this brand name has become the generic name ( regardless of manufacturer ). In Australia and Austria Sony were therefore deprived of the rights to the brand.

There are devices, as well as those without a radio receiver, depending on the model for FM, often in addition to MW. Depending on the model are also of stationary cassette decks known features such as Dolby noise reduction or car to find reverse in part, a recording function.

• 2.1 The Olympus patent
• 2.2 The Stereobelt

History and Design

Cassette -based Walkman

On July 1, 1979 Sony came out with its first Walkman TPS -L2, called on the market. As early as 1977 had the German Andreas Pavel similar device, the account " body- bound small system for high-quality playback of auditory events ", for patent.

In the 1980s, the Walkman had become an important status symbol and symbol of a new life form among the youth. From devices with the brand name Walkman by 2004 about 335 million units have been sold. For some devices, was still a "hot - key" was about the lowered volume and an external microphone is activated. Some of the devices had two headphone outputs to allow simultaneous listening to the music with two people. The volume control had a separate adjustment for left and right audio channels on some devices. After a production period of over 30 years, Sony announced in October 2010, the cessation of production known. The production had already been set in April of the same year, a total of approximately 200 million cassette players were sold according to company data.

CD Walkman ( Discman )

The first Walkman who could read CDs, under the name D-50 published (in some countries also D-5) in 1984. The CD Walkman was sold under the brand name " Discman " until Sony decided to all its portable music devices for sale under the Walkman logo. 2009 Sony still produces CD walkman. The newer models now play MP3 - CDs, in addition, developed by Sony ATRAC3 and ATRAC3Plus.

Walkman with digital cassette (DAT )

In the 1990s, Sony introduced a number of DAT devices forth (Digital Audio Tape). They also offered the possibility of digital recording on cassettes into CD quality. Because of the high prices and because DAT generally could not establish itself as a successor to the analog cassette, also gained the DAT Walkman Low distribution.

MiniDisc Walkman

The MiniDisc was introduced in Japan in 1991, 1992 was the first model on the market. Initially, mini discs were compared with smaller discs which were able to store 74 minutes of music in CD -like quality in two-thirds the size. The first MiniDisc player from Sony, the MZ -1 was large and relatively unwieldy, however, the successor models were always small, so that the current model is barely larger than the disc itself in the course of the MiniDisc history have been some important changes introduced. From the 80 - minute disc to the addition of MDLP ( MiniDisc Long Play) codec which allows you to store up to four times the amount of music on one disc. With the NetMD was also you launch the software OpenMGJukeBox, later SonicStage. Only with this in the meantime USB-enabled MiniDisc devices could be filled with music. In 2004, the Hi- MD was introduced as the successor to the MiniDisc, which was now able to store 1 gigabyte of data. The strict coupling to Sony's SonicStage lost audio player is increasingly popular - especially in the U.S. and in Europe. To counteract this, Sony loosened the networking of the audio player on the software. The current model (MZ -RH1 ) was published in 2006. All other manufacturers of mini disc players have already ceased production.

Walkman phones

With the brand name Sony Walkman or the mobile phone joint venture Sony Ericsson has brought a new mobile product line on the market. These are equipped according to the manufacturer with a very good music player. However, unlike most other Walkman products, they are not able to play Sony's ATRAC, they must also not be recorded using SonicStage. In June 2007, Sony Ericsson announced that 26.5 million Walkman phones have been sold worldwide. This Sony Ericsson has the greatest commercial success with music phones.

MP3 Walkman

Initially based Sony MP3 Walkman Flash memory and supported exclusively Sony's ATRAC. Their capacity ranged up to 1 GB. The first MP3 Walkman was the NW- MS70D with a capacity of 256 MB. At the time of its publication (2003) he was regarded as the smallest player on the market. After the success of Apple's iPod Sony continuously lost market share to competitors. The first reaction to give the iPod forehead, was the NW- HD1, which was smaller and was advertised as to have a better sound quality. However, because the player only ATRAC played and thus the widespread MP3 format only by SonicStage, which also was error rich, had to be converted, the HD1 and his successors was HD -3 and HD -5 not a serious threat to the sales of the iPod. There were other attempts to recapture the market (such as the Walkman Bean). Since all of these attempts failed, the models were taken off the market in mid-2006.

Sony now brought out the NW- A series. These players were available beginning with 6 (NW -A1000 ) and 20 (NW -A3000 ), later also with 8 (NW - A1200 ) gigabytes of memory. An important advertising object included the long battery life, the EL display and the numerous music features. So there were features such as "Artist Link ", which served to find similar artists. When " My Favourite Shuffle", the player automatically selected the 100 most listened to songs and played them in a random playback. The 'Time Machine Shuffle ' was looking for a random year and played all this year published the songs in a random order. The last firmware update ( v.3.00 ) added more features to well as a clock and a calendar. Furthermore, the player now playing alongside ATRAC3, MP3 and WMA from even AAC files. However, Sony still sat on SonicStage and the actually intended as the successor of SonicStage, now abandoned Connect player. Since other operating systems such as Mac OS or Linux are not supported, SonicStage was very buggy and many users rejected in principle such software, Sony received much criticism for its strategy, as the music was transferred to the player. But the series of northwest - southeast and northwest -E generally received excellent marks for battery life and sound quality. In particular, the NW- S700 series has been praised for its futuristic function " noise-canceling ". In this series headphones are supplied with microphones, which were able to suppress the outside noise. Various so -called Sony "Clear Audio Technologies " were highlighted always positive. The point that brought the player repeatedly discredited, was SonicStage. While it was the successor of the NW- A1000 series (NW - A80x ) recorded a success, but he was playing on the MP3 player market hardly matters.

In response, Sony end of August 2008 was sent to the members of the Connect music store a message about the attitude of the platform. This was justified by the fact that Sony have ATRAC format no longer wanted to continue to develop. In addition to the end of ATRAC also the end of SonicStage was decided. New Walkman devices should only have to drag & drop can be played with music or be compatible with popular media players such as Windows Media Player. The NW- 80x series was relaunched under the name NWZ- A81x and thereby gained to attention. So the player won an Editors Choice award from CNET and reached in a test by Computer Bild second place. In addition, the NWZ- S51x series was released, which also got good grades. The task of ATRAC and the detachment of SonicStage was regarded by many as a step in the right direction.

Android Walkman

Since early 2012, Sony has again presented under the trademark Walkman numerous new devices. These usually have a touch screen and running the Android operating system, so they are very similar to the classic smartphones, both in terms of software and hardware. However, the units do not enable telephony 3G/4G-Netze and are therefore equipped like the Apple iPod touch. The latest Android Walkman is called F800 and was presented on 18 July 2012.

Patent Legal Situation

The Compact Cassette in 1963 brought by the electronics giant Philips to market.

The Olympus patent

Olympus in 1964, an account a year after market introduction of music cassette, a patent for a small, oriented to form the cassette portable recording device (inventor Matayo Toyozumi, U.S. patent d203049 ). The patent expired in 1979, which is consistent with the production launch of the Walkman by Sony. It is unknown whether a serial production was carried out.

The Stereobelt

In his autobiography, claiming the Sony company founder Akio Morita (1921-1999) to be the inventor of the Walkman. However, in 1977 the German Andreas Pavel had applied for a similar device in several countries for patent. The patent describes his " Stereobelt " as " body- bound small system for high-quality playback of auditory events ." Sony denied for a long time, the claims of Pavel, several courts denied his claim to royalty. After the death of Akio Morita joined Sony in 2004, however, an out-of -court settlement with Andreas Pavel.