73-524: The Creative MuVo (in some markets, formerly Creative NOMAD MuVo ) is a range of digital audio players produced by Creative Technology Ltd. , launched in 2002. Most models in the MuVo range use flash memory for storing data; the only exceptions being the MuVo² and MuVo² FM models, which use microdrives . The distinguishing feature of the range, beginning with the original MuVo and carried on to newer models,
146-523: A line-level audio signal (radio, voice, etc.). Devices such as CD players can be connected to the MP3 player (using the USB port) in order to directly play music from the memory of the player without the use of a computer. Modular MP3 keydrive players are composed of two detachable parts: the head (or reader/writer) and the body (the memory). They can be independently obtained and upgradable (one can change
219-626: A personal organiser are emulated, or support for video games , like the iriver clix (through compatibility of Adobe Flash Lite ) or the PlayStation Portable , is included. Only mid-range to high-end players support "savestating" for power-off (i.e. leaves off song/video in progress similar to tape-based media). Nearly all players are compatible with the MP3 audio format, and many others support Windows Media Audio (WMA), Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) and WAV . Some players are compatible with open-source formats like Ogg Vorbis and
292-521: A portable cassette player and the brand was later extended to serve most of Sony's portable audio devices; since 2011 it consists exclusively of digital flash memory players. The current flagship product as of 2022 is the WM1ZM2 player. Walkman cassette players were very popular during the 1980s, which led to "walkman" becoming an genericized label term for personal compact stereos of any producer or brand. 220 million cassette-type Walkmen were sold by
365-410: A 20th anniversary on July 1, 1999, with a prestige model. By 1989, 10 years after the launch of the first model, over 100 million Walkmans had been sold worldwide. 150 million units were manufactured by 1995. By 1999, 20 years after the introduction of the first model, Sony sold 186 million cassette Walkmans. Portable compact disc players led to the decline of the cassette Walkman, which
438-486: A colour liquid crystal display (LCD) or organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screen is used as a display for PMPs that have a screen. Various players include the ability to record video, usually with the aid of optional accessories or cables, and audio, with a built-in microphone or from a line out cable or FM tuner . Some players include readers for memory cards , which are advertised to equip players with extra storage or transferring media. In some players, features of
511-831: A crossfade mixer. Many such devices also tend to be smartphones . Many mobile digital media players have last position memory , in which when it is powered off, a user does not have to worry about starting at the first track again, or even hearing repeats of others songs when a playlist, album, or whole library is cued for shuffle play , in which shuffle play is a common feature, too. Early playback devices to even remotely have "last position memory" that predated solid-state digital media playback devices were tape-based media, except this kind suffered from having to be "rewound", whereas disc-based media suffered from no native "last position memory", unless disc-players had their own last position memory. However, some models of solid-state flash memory (or hard drive ones with some moving parts) are somewhat
584-468: A decline in sales of PMPs, leading to most devices being phased out, such as the iPod Touch on May 10, 2022, though certain flagship devices like the Sony Walkman are still in production. Portable DVD and BD players are still manufactured. Digital audio players are generally categorised by storage media: Some MP3 players can encode directly to MP3 or other digital audio formats directly from
657-627: A few hundred dollars. Some DAPs have FM radio tuners built in. Many also have an option to change the band from the usual 87.5 – 108.0 MHz to the Japanese band of 76.0 – 90.0 MHz. DAPs typically never have an AM band, or even HD Radio since such features would be either cost-prohibitive for the application, or because of AM's sensitivity to interference. Newer portable media players are now coming with Internet access via Wi-Fi . Examples of such devices are Android OS devices by various manufacturers, and iOS devices on Apple products like
730-541: A few months after the MPMan, and also featured a 32 MB storage capacity. It was a success during the holiday season, with sales exceeding expectations. Interest and investment in digital music were subsequently spurred from it. The RIAA soon filed a lawsuit alleging that the device abetted illegal copying of music, but Diamond won a legal victory on the shoulders of Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. and MP3 players were ruled legal devices. Because of
803-497: A few years, cassettes were outselling vinyl records, and would continue to do so until the compact disc (CD) overtook cassette sales in 1991. In German-speaking countries, the use of "Walkman" became generic, meaning a personal stereo of any make, to a degree that the Austrian Supreme Court of Justice ruled in 2002 that Sony could not prevent others from using the term "Walkman" to describe similar goods. It
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#1732791004052876-499: A given media player is followed by an increase in the number, for example an MP5 or MP12 Player, despite there being no such corresponding MPEG standards. iriver of South Korea originally made portable CD players and then started making digital audio players and portable media players in 2002. Creative also introduced the ZEN line. Both of these attained high popularity in some regions. In 2004, Microsoft attempted to take advantage of
949-564: A headphone jack but no external speaker) made it the ideal product for thousands of consumers looking for a compact portable stereo that they could take with them anywhere". According to The Verge , "the world changed" on the day the Walkman was released. The Walkman became an icon in 1980s culture. In 1986, the word "Walkman" entered the Oxford English Dictionary . Millions used the Walkman during exercise, marking
1022-399: A marketing strategy, hiring young adults to walk around in public wearing a Walkman, offering nearby people to test out the product. Sony also hired actors to pose with the Walkman around the streets of Tokyo as an additional form of promotion. A major component of the Walkman advertising campaign was overspecialization of the device. Prior to the Walkman, the common device for portable music
1095-465: A method for carrying a player of this type on a belt around the waist, listening via headphones , but his " Stereobelt " concept did not include the required engineering advancements to yield high-quality sound reproduction while the tape player was subject to mechanical shock as would be expected on a person walking. Pavel later lost his suit claiming the Walkman idea as his own. Finally in 2003, with Pavel threatening to file infringement proceedings in
1168-413: A popular standard format and as a result most digital audio players after this supported it and hence were often called MP3 players . While popularly being called MP3 players at the time, most players could play more than just the MP3 file format. Players also sometimes supported Windows Media Audio (WMA), Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), Vorbis , FLAC , Speex and Ogg . The first portable MP3 player
1241-540: A precursor of personal mainstream tech possessions such as personal computers or mobile phones. Headphones also started to be worn in public. This caused safety controversies in the US, which in 1982 led to the mayor of Woodbridge, New Jersey banning Walkman from being worn in public due to pedestrian accidents. In the market, the Walkman's success also led to great adoption of the Compact Cassette format. Within
1314-484: A product which was "the perfect choice" for each consumer. This method of marketing to an extremely expansive user-base while maintaining the idea that the product was made for each individual "[got] the best of all possible worlds—mass marketing and personal differentiation". Culturally the Walkman had a great effect and it became ubiquitous. According to Time , the Walkman's "unprecedented combination of portability (it ran on two AA batteries) and privacy (it featured
1387-473: A spartan user interface and a smaller form factor, the iPod was initially popular within the Macintosh community. In July 2002, Apple introduced the second generation update to the iPod, which was compatible with Windows computers through Musicmatch Jukebox . iPods quickly became the most popular DAP product and led the fast growth of this market during the early and mid 2000s. In 2002, Archos released
1460-984: Is nearest competitor in 2006 being SanDisk . Apple also led in Japan over its homegrown makers Sony and Panasonic during this time, although the gap between Apple and Sony had closed by about 2010. In South Korea, the market was led by local brands iriver , Samsung and Cowon as of 2005. European buying patterns differed; while Apple was in a particularly strong position in the United Kingdom, continental Western Europe generally preferred cheaper, often Chinese rebranded players under local brands such as Grundig . Meanwhile, in Eastern Europe including Russia, higher priced players with improved design or functionality were preferred instead, and here Korean makers like iriver and Samsung were particularly popular, as well as such OEM models under local brands. Creative
1533-480: Is that the players are split into two unequal parts. The smaller part functions as the audio player, bearing all the controls, inputs and outputs, internal microphone, and a male USB-A plug. The larger part has a female USB-A receptacle, and holds one AAA battery : this provides power to the player. The player/flash drive section is a USB mass storage device , therefore it requires no drivers on most operating systems. Data files, as well as audio files, can be stored on
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#17327910040521606-472: Is therefore an example of what marketing experts call the " genericide " of a brand. A large statue of a Sports Walkman FM was erected in Tokyo's Ginza district in 2019 in celebration of the 40th anniversary. In 1989, Sony released portable Video8 recorders marketed as Video Walkman , extending the brand name. In 1990 Sony released portable Digital Audio Tape (DAT) players marketed as DAT Walkman . It
1679-504: The EU , demand for MP3 players peaked in 2007 with 43.5 million devices sold totalling 3.8 billion euros. Both sales and revenue experienced a double-digit shrinkage for the first time in 2010. In India, sales of PMPs decreased for the first time in 2012, a few years after developed economies. The market was led by Apple with a share of about 50%, while Sony and Philips were the other major brands. Meanwhile, sales of Apple's best selling product,
1752-516: The Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC). Audio files purchased from online stores may include digital rights management (DRM) copy protection, which many modern players support. The JPEG format is widely supported by players. Some players, like the iPod series, provide compatibility to display additional file formats like GIF , PNG , and TIFF , while others are bundled with conversion software. Most newer players support
1825-554: The MPEG-4 Part 2 video format, and many other players are compatible with Windows Media Video (WMV) and AVI . Software included with the players may be able to convert video files into a compatible format. Many players have a built-in electret microphone which allows recording. Usually recording quality is poor, suitable for speech but not music. There are also professional-quality recorders suitable for high-quality music recording with external microphones, at prices starting at
1898-539: The Sansa line of players, starting with the e100 series, and then following up with the m200 series, and c100 series. In 2007, Apple introduced the iPod Touch , the first iPod with a multi-touch screen. Some similar products existed before such as the iriver clix in 2006. In South Korea, sales of MP3 players peaked in 2006, but started declining afterwards. This was driven partly by the launch of mobile television services (DMB), which along with increased demand of movies on
1971-553: The Windows 95 and NT operating systems, which did not have native support for USB connections. In 1999 the first hard drive based DAP using a 2.5" laptop drive, the Personal Jukebox (PJB-100) designed by Compaq and released by Hango Electronics Co with 4.8 GB storage, which held about 1,200 songs, and pioneered what would be called the jukebox segment of digital music portables. This segment eventually became
2044-527: The iPhone , iPod Touch , and iPad . Internet access has even enabled people to use the Internet as an underlying communications layer for their choice of music for automated music randomisation services like Pandora , to on-demand video access (which also has music available) such as YouTube. This technology has enabled casual and hobbyist DJs to cue their tracks from a smaller package from an Internet connection, sometimes they will use two identical devices on
2117-403: The "best of both worlds" in the market. Media players' firmware may be equipped with a basic file manager and a text reader. There are three categories of audio formats: Sony Walkman Walkman ( Japanese : ウォークマン , Hepburn : U~ōkuman ) is a brand of portable audio players manufactured and marketed by Japanese company Sony since 1979. The original Walkman started out as
2190-477: The 2000s. Other non-phone products such as the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation Vita have also been considered to be PMPs. DAPs and PMPs have declined in popularity after the late 2000s due to increasing worldwide adoption of smartphones that already come with PMP functionalities. Sales peaked in 2007 and market revenue (worth $ 21.6 billion) peaked in 2008, albeit notably mobile phones that could play music outsold DAPs by almost three to one as of 2007. In
2263-562: The CW100, under the brand name iAUDIO . In December 2000, some months after the Creative's NOMAD Jukebox , Archos released its Jukebox 6000 with a 6 GB hard drive. Philips also released a player called the Rush. On 23 October 2001, Apple unveiled the first generation iPod , a 5 GB hard drive based DAP with a 1.8" hard drive and a 2" monochrome display. With the development of
Creative MuVo - Misplaced Pages Continue
2336-590: The South Korean giant Samsung Electronics . Sony entered the digital audio player market in 1999 with the Vaio Music Clip and Memory Stick Walkman , however they were technically not MP3 players as it did not support the MP3 format but instead Sony's own ATRAC format and WMA . The company's first MP3-supporting Walkman player did not come until 2004. Over the years, various hard-drive-based and flash-based DAPs and PMPs have been released under
2409-433: The US. However, in 1988 Kramer's failure to raise the £60,000 required to renew the patent meant it entered the public domain. Apple Inc. hired Kramer as a consultant and presented his work as an example of prior art in the field of digital audio players during their litigation with Burst.com almost two decades later. In 2008, Apple acknowledged Kramer as the inventor of the digital audio player The Listen Up Player
2482-569: The Walkman range. The Samsung YEPP line was first released in 1999 with the aim of making the smallest music players on the market. In 2000, Creative released the 6 GB hard-drive-based Creative NOMAD Jukebox. The name borrowed the jukebox metaphor popularised by Remote Solution , also used by Archos . Later players in the Creative NOMAD range used microdrives rather than laptop drives. In October 2000, South Korean software company Cowon Systems released their first MP3 player,
2555-607: The ability to download music to FlashPAC. AAC and such music downloading services later formed the foundation for the Apple iPod and iTunes. The first production-volume portable digital audio player was The Audible Player (also known as MobilePlayer, or Digital Words To Go) from Audible.com available for sale in January 1998, for $ 200. It only supported playback of digital audio in Audible's proprietary, low-bitrate format which
2628-511: The ancestors of digital audio players such as the Apple iPod. There are several types of MP3 players: British scientist Kane Kramer invented the first digital audio player, which he called the IXI . His 1979 prototypes were capable of up to one hour of audio playback but did not enter commercial production. His UK patent application was not filed until 1981 and was issued in 1985 in the UK and 1987 in
2701-541: The beginning of the aerobics fad. Between 1987 and 1997, the height of the Walkman's popularity, the number of people who said they walked for exercise increased by 30%. Other firms, including Aiwa , Panasonic and Toshiba , produced similar products, and in 1983 cassettes outsold vinyl for the first time. The Walkman has been cited as influencing people's relationship with music and technology, due to its "solitary" and "personal" nature, as users were listening to their music of choice instead of radio. It has been seen as
2774-659: The dominant type of digital music player. Also at the end of 1999 the first in-dash MP3 player appeared. The Empeg Car offered players in several capacities ranging from 5 to 28 GB. The unit did not catch on and was discontinued in the fall of 2001. For the next couple of years, there were offerings from South Korean companies, namely the startups iRiver (brand of Reigncom), Mpio (brand of DigitalWay) and Cowon . At its peak, these Korean makers held as much as 40% world market share in MP3 players. These manufacturers however lost their way after 2004 as they failed to compete with new iPods . By 2006 they were also overtaken by
2847-476: The end of production in 2010; including digital Walkman devices such as DAT , MiniDisc , CD (originally Discman then renamed the CD ;Walkman) and memory-type media players , it has sold approximately 400 million at this time. The Walkman brand has also been applied to transistor radios , and Sony Ericsson mobile phones. In March 1979, at the request of Masaru Ibuka , the audio department modified
2920-415: The executive deputy president Norio Ohga to design a playback-only stereo version optimized for walking. The metal-cased blue-and-silver Walkman TPS-L2, the world's first low-cost personal stereo , went on sale in Japan on July 1, 1979, and was sold for around ¥33,000 (or $ 150.00). Though Sony predicted it would sell about 5,000 units a month, it sold more than 30,000 in the first two months. The Walkman
2993-531: The first PMP, the Archos Jukebox Multimedia with a little 1.5" colour screen. The next year, Archos released another multimedia jukebox , the AV300 , with a 3.8" screen and a 20 GB hard drive. In the same year, Toshiba released the first Gigabeat . In 2003, Dell launched a line of portable digital music players called Dell DJ . They were discontinued by 2006. The name MP4 player
Creative MuVo - Misplaced Pages Continue
3066-517: The first model outfitted with remote control, as well as one with solar battery (WM-F107). Within a decade of launch, Sony held a 50% market share in the United States and 46% in Japan. Two limited edition 10th anniversary models were released in 1989 (WM-701S/T) in Japan, made of brass and plated in sterling silver . Only a few hundred were built of each. A 15th anniversary model was also made on July 1, 1994, with vertical loading, and
3139-479: The flash memory, therefore the player can also be used as a USB flash drive . However, players like the MuVo², MuVo² FM, MuVo² XT, MuVo Slim, and the MuVo Vidz are an exception. The MuVo N200 looks like a typical MuVo player, but the two unequal parts are merged and inseparable. Many, but not all, models also include an internal microphone, allowing the device to be used as a low-quality audio recorder. The MuVo line
3212-460: The globe and by 2005, more than half of all music sold in South Korea was sold directly to mobile phones and all major handset makers in the world had released MP3 playing phones. By 2006, more MP3 playing mobile phones were sold than all stand-alone MP3 players put together. The rapid rise of the media player in phones was quoted by Apple as a primary reason for developing the iPhone . In 2007,
3285-410: The go led to a transition away from music-only players to PMPs. By 2008, more video-enabled PMPs were sold than audio-only players. By the mid-2000s and the years after, Apple with its iPod was the best-selling DAP or PMP by a significant margin, with one of out four sold worldwide being an iPod. It was especially dominant in the United States where it had over 70% of sales at different points in time,
3358-729: The growing PMP market by launching the Portable Media Center (PMC) platform. It was introduced at the 2004 Consumer Electronics Show with the announcement of the Zen Portable Media Center , which was co-developed by Creative . The Microsoft Zune series would later be based on the Gigabeat S , one of the PMC-implemented players. In May 2005, flash memory maker SanDisk entered the PMP market with
3431-433: The head or the body; i.e. to add more memory). Today, every smartphone also serves as a portable media player; however, prior to the rise of smartphones in the 2007–2012 time frame, a variety of handheld players were available to store and play music. The immediate predecessor to the portable media player was the portable CD player and prior to that, the personal stereo . In particular, Sony 's Walkman and Discman are
3504-481: The iPod, were eclipsed by the iPhone in 2011. DAPs continue to be made in lower volumes by manufacturers such as SanDisk, Sony, IRIVER, Philips, Apple, Cowon, and a range of Chinese manufacturers namely Aigo, Newsmy, PYLE and ONDA. They often have specific selling points in the smartphone era, such as portability (for small sized players) or for high quality sound suited for audiophiles . PMPs are capable of playing digital audio , images , and/or video . Usually,
3577-426: The late 1960s, the introduction of prerecorded compact cassettes made it possible to listen to music on portable devices as well as on car stereos, though gramophone records remained the most popular format for home listening. Portable tape players of various designs were available, but none of them were intended to be operated by a person as they were walking. In the 1970s, Brazilian inventor Andreas Pavel devised
3650-755: The late 1990s following the creation of the MP3 codec in Germany. MP3-playing devices were mostly pioneered by South Korean startups, who by 2002 would control the majority of global sales. However the industry would eventually be defined by the popular Apple iPod . In 2006, 20% of Americans owned a PMP, a figure strongly driven by the young; more than half (54%) of American teens owned one, as did 30% of young adults aged 18 to 34. In 2007, 210 million PMPs were sold worldwide, worth US$ 19.5 billion. In 2008, video-enabled players would overtake audio-only players. Increasing sales of smartphones and tablet computers have led to
3723-481: The model WM-F1 in 1982. The first model with Dolby noise-reduction system and an auto reverse function appeared in 1982. The first ultra-compact "cassette-size" Walkman was introduced in 1983, model WM-20, with a telescopic case. This allowed even easier carrying of a Walkman in bags or pockets. In October 1985, the WM-101 model was the first in its class with a "gum stick" rechargeable battery. In 1986 Sony presented
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#17327910040523796-529: The name Network Walkman (alongside players developed by the VAIO division). The first player, which used Memory Stick storage medium, was branded as MS Walkman , shortly before the Walkman brand unification. Most future models would use built-in solid-state flash memory , although hard disk based players were also released from 2004 to 2007. They came with OpenMG copyright protection and, until 2004, exclusively supported Sony's in-house ATRAC format; there
3869-563: The new technology, and instead young startups would come to dominate the early era of MP3 players. Other early MP3 portables included the Creative Labs Nomad and the RCA Lyra . These portables were small and light, but had only enough memory to hold around 7 to 20 songs at normal 128 kbit/s compression rates. They also used slower parallel port connections to transfer files from PC to player, necessary as most PCs then used
3942-723: The non-standard Japanese and English brands globally. The Walkman has sold more than 250 million units worldwide. When Akio Morita was knighted in October 1992, the headline in the British newspapers The Sun and The Daily Telegraph was "Arise, Sir Sony Walkman" [Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman, Paul du Gay] [1] The Compact Cassette was developed by the Dutch electronics firm Philips and released in August 1963. In
4015-427: The number of phones that could play media was over 1 billion. Some companies have created music-centric sub-brands for mobile phones, for example the former Sony Ericsson 's Walkman range or Nokia 's XpressMusic range, which have extra emphasis on music playback and typically have features such as dedicated music buttons. Mobile phones with PMP functionalities such as video playback also started appearing in
4088-513: The player's notoriety as the target of a major lawsuit, the Rio is erroneously assumed to be the first digital audio player. Eiger Labs and Diamond went on to establish a new segment in the portable audio player market and the following year saw several new manufacturers enter this market. The PMP300 would be the start of the Rio line of players. Noticeably, major technology companies did not catch on with
4161-479: The remaining territories where he held protective rights, Sony approached him with a view to settling the matter amicably, which led to both parties signing a contract and confidentiality agreement in 2004. The settlement was reported to be a cash payment in the "low eight figures" and ongoing royalties of the sale of certain Walkman models. Sony cofounder Masaru Ibuka used Sony's bulky TC-D5 cassette recorder to listen to music while traveling for business. He asked
4234-549: The small recorder used by journalists, "Pressman", into a smaller recorder. After many people praised the good sound quality evaluation, under the leadership of Akio Morita , SONY began to launch the Walkman in July 1979. Akio Morita positioned Walkman in the youth market, emphasized youth, vitality, and fashion, and created a headset culture. In February 1980, he began to sell Walkman to the world, and in November 1980, he began to use
4307-537: The user the song currently playing. The first car audio hard drive-based MP3 player was also released in 1997 by MP32Go and was called the MP32Go Player. It consisted of a 3 GB IBM 2.5" hard drive that was housed in a trunk-mounted enclosure connected to the car's radio system. It retailed for $ 599 and was a commercial failure. The Rio PMP300 from Diamond Multimedia was introduced in September 1998,
4380-401: Was 1.9%, placing it behind Apple, SanDisk , Creative and Samsung . In Japan its share in 2009–2010 was between 43 and 48%, slightly ahead of Apple. Meanwhile, Sony Computer Entertainment , a Sony division who are not involved in Walkman products, officially described their PlayStation Portable in 2004 as the "21st century Walkman". Walkman portable digital audio and media players are
4453-416: Was a marketing term for inexpensive portable media players, usually from little-known or generic device manufacturers. The name itself is a misnomer , since most MP4 players through 2007 were incompatible with the MPEG-4 Part 14 or the .mp4 container format. Instead, the term refers to their ability to play more file types than just MP3. In this sense, in some markets like Brazil, any new function added to
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#17327910040524526-452: Was developed for spoken word recordings. Capacity was limited to 4 MB of internal flash memory, or about 2 hours of play, using a custom rechargeable battery pack. The unit had no display and rudimentary controls. MP3 was introduced as an audio coding standard in 1992. It was based on several audio data compression techniques, including the modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT), FFT and psychoacoustic methods. MP3 became
4599-899: Was discontinued in 2009. Most models share a similar shape and design, except for the players listed above. Digital audio player A portable media player ( PMP ) or digital audio player ( DAP ) is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. The data is typically stored on a compact disc (CD), Digital Versatile Disc (DVD), Blu-ray Disc (BD), flash memory , microdrive , SD cards or hard disk drive ; most earlier PMPs used physical media, but modern players mostly use flash memory. In contrast, analogue portable audio players play music from non-digital media that use analogue media , such as cassette tapes or vinyl records . Digital audio players (DAP) were often marketed as MP3 players even if they also supported other file formats and media types. The PMP term
4672-483: Was discontinued in Japan in 2010. The last cassette-based model available in the US was the WM-FX290W, which was first released in 2004. The marketing of the Walkman helped introduce the idea of "Japanese-ness" into global culture, synonymous with miniaturization and high-technology. The "Walk-men" and "Walk-women" in advertisements were created to be the ideal reflections of the viewing audience. Sony implemented
4745-573: Was extended further in 1992 for MiniDisc players with the MD Walkman brand. From 1997, Sony's Discman range of portable compact disc (CD) players started to rebrand as CD Walkman . In 2000, the Walkman brand (the entire range) was unified, and a new small icon, "W.", was made for the branding. From 2012, Walkman was also the name of the music player software on Sony Xperia . It has since been rebranded to Music . On December 21, 1999, Sony launched its first digital audio players (DAP), under
4818-538: Was followed by a series of international releases; as overseas sales companies objected to the wasei-eigo name, it was sold under several names, including Sound-about in the United States, Freestyle in Australia and Sweden, and Stowaway in the UK. Eventually, in the early 1980s, Walkman caught on globally and Sony used the name worldwide. The TPS-L2 was introduced in the US in June ;1980. The 1980s
4891-510: Was introduced later for devices that had additional capabilities such as video playback. Generally speaking, they are portable, employing internal or replaceable batteries , equipped with a 3.5 mm headphone jack which can be used for headphones or to connect to a boombox , shelf stereo system, or connect to car audio and home stereos wired or via a wireless connection such as Bluetooth . Some players also include radio tuners , voice recording and other features. DAPs appeared in
4964-529: Was launched in 1997 by SaeHan Information Systems , which sold its MPMan F10 player in South Korea in spring 1998. In mid-1998, the South Korean company licensed the players for North American distribution to Eiger Labs, which rebranded them as the EigerMan F10 and F20. The flash-based players were available in 32 MB or 64 MB (6 or 12 songs) storage capacity and had a LCD screen to tell
5037-988: Was no support for industry-standard MP3 as Sony wanted to protect its records division, Sony BMG , from piracy . Additionally, Walkman-branded mobile phones were also made by the Sony Ericsson joint venture. Sony could not repeat the success of the cassette player in the 21st-century digital audio player (DAP) market. Rival Apple 's iPod range became a large success in the market, hindering Walkman sales internationally, though it fared better domestically. The Network Walkman for several years had paltry market share and had also been struggling against numerous other rivals such as Creative , Rio , Mpio and iRiver , although sales and share did eventually increase fivefold in 2005 and continued improving, but remained small. Its pricing policy, SonicStage software and lack of MP3 support in earlier years have been suggested factors of its performance. Its U.S. market share in 2006
5110-547: Was released in 1996 by Audio Highway, an American company led by Nathan Schulhof . It could store up to an hour of music, but despite getting an award at CES 1997 only 25 of the devices were made. That same year AT&T developed the FlashPAC digital audio player which initially used AT&T's Perceptual Audio Coder (PAC) for music compression, but in 1997 switched to AAC . At about the same time AT&T also developed an internal Web-based music streaming service that had
5183-559: Was the decade of the intensive development of the Walkman lineup. In 1981 Sony released the second Walkman model, the WM-2, which was significantly smaller than the TPS-L2 thanks to the "inverse" mounting of the power-operated magnetic head and soft-touch buttons. Sony applied the "Walkman" brand to some transistor radios starting with the matching blue SRF-40 FM Walkman in 1980, and added a radio system to some Walkman cassette models starting with
5256-536: Was the portable radio, which could only offer listeners standard music broadcasts. Having the ability to customize a playlist was a new and exciting revolution in music consumption. Potential buyers had the opportunity to choose their perfect match in terms of mobile listening technology. The ability to play one's personal choice of music and listen privately was a huge selling point of the Walkman, especially amongst teens, who greatly contributed to its success. A diversity of features and styles suggested that there would be
5329-424: Was the top-selling maker in its home country of Singapore. In China, local brands Newman, DEC and Aigo were noted as the top vendors as of 2006. Samsung SPH-M2100 , the first mobile phone with built-in MP3 player was produced in South Korea in August 1999. Samsung SPH-M100 (UpRoar) launched in 2000 was the first mobile phone to have MP3 music capabilities in the US market. The innovation spread rapidly across
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