Where is my Walkman?

There is a distinct difference in conversational tones between children and their parents. Some of this exists because of the need for teenagers to get peer acceptance. If everyone else is saying the music is “sick,” they should probably join the foray into new meanings of old words, rather than continue with the Queen’s English.

Sometimes the difference in language is due to business products. When I was a teenager, there was a device which Sony created to allow the user to play music while walking down the street. It was called a Walkman, and people loved it. People used Walkmans on the bus, as they walked down the street, and as they jogged.

The Walkman was the standard for any portable device used to play music. There were lots of cheap ripoffs that did the same thing, but everyone wanted the Walkman. As times changed, Sony introduced the DiscMan, which would allow the user to play compact discs, rather than the original tapes.

So should I be surprised that my son, who is now 15, doesn’t own a Walkman? Instead, he, and all his friends, own an iPod. The iPod is essentially a Walkman with music stored on a hard drive, rather than on a tape, or on a CD.

This is not a story of generational differences, though, but of a large Japanese company, Sony, who once dominated the market in portable music players, and now is a non-issue.

Business historians have to wonder if Sony could have done more to secure its lead.

So how did Apple come in and steal the market for portable music devices?

1. Apple made it more user-friendly. Apple gives consumers the full package of buying and downloading the music, as well as playing the music. They made it so easy that even grandparents could figure it out. Sony stuck with their traditional model of selling the music player on its own, rather than giving consumers the whole package
2. Apple has played a major role in controlling the distribution of electronic music. Apple realized early on that all the music players needed to get the music from somewhere. With the success of the internet, they leveraged their software abilities and set up iTunes stores to allow users to buy music quickly and easily on their computer. Sony could have hooked up with another major player, like Microsoft, to offer a similar service, but didn’t.
3. Sony made the same mistake twice. Sony, who trumpeted the Betamax technology in the mid-70s until VHS stole the market for personal videos, again used its own technology for digital music, atrac3, while mp3 quickly took over as the industry standard.
4. Apple took its leadership position and built on it. Apple continued to innovate with new models. They increased the memory, and increased the processing power to allow users to get much more out of their portable music players than just music. They allowed third party developers to profit by giving them a distribution source (iTunes store), and software to build upon.

For the latter half of this decade, the iPod has held a market share of over 75% of all mp3 players. Meanwhile, in dollar terms, the iPod has held over 80% of the market. It has used good business principles to steal a market from the industry leading Sony Walkman, and continues to build on that leadership position.

Although my son and I have used different terms, he has as much trouble finding his iPod in the morning, as I used to have finding my Walkman when I was his age.