Walkman
By: Steven Erquiza
Forty years have gone by since Sony's Walkman made music available in a portable way. It was launched on July 1, 1979; it paved the way for cassettes to CDs, downloads, and smartphone streaming services. The second-generation Walkman, released in 1981, created a global boom.
Made for Fun?
The initial production run of the original Walkman was 30,000 units, which shows that Sony was not confident in the product. During that era, the actual view was that people were used to listening to their music on a stereo in their living room. Sony was pondering how to market the Walkman's features effectively.
A recording device known as the Pressman, which was marketed to reporters by Sony, was told to be the origin for the development of the first Walkman. Of course, it's not the only origin story. On the Sony website, Chairman Ibuka Masaru asked for a better version of Pressman to listen to music in airplanes on business trips.
Kuroki Yasuo spearheaded the team that developed Walkman and became known as Mr. Walkman. In the book he wrote, Uōkuman-ryū kikakujutsu (Walkman-Style Planning), he explained that: "It's a fact that there was no clearly directed plan to make and sell the Walkman. Young engineers created it to see if it was possible. It was never on the product development list for the tape recorder division. This lack of planning is what makes the Walkman story so fascinating."
Ōsone Kōzō, an engineer, also told the same story in an interview. The device was first created for fun then later realized its importance. These are just speculations based on interviews and statements from the people in Sony. The Walkman was estimated to be developed for 4 months. Considering that many of the Pressman features were adapted in this device, this is a concise short span for that era.
The sales were not a lot in the first month, though the first 30,000 units were sold out in less than 3 months. The explosive popularity of the Walkman continued the following year. In April 1980, Nikkei Sangyō Shimbun reported that the monthly production of 20,000 units was not enough to keep up with the demand. The sales for the first seven months were equivalent to 140,000.
In January 1981, the Nikkei drew a lot of attention to students listening to portable stereos outside university entrance exams. The popularity of Walkman among the younger generation drew attention to their elders, as described by Kuroki in his book, "Adults blasted the Walkman as a device for shutting out the world and drowning
Iconic Overseas
19 months after the Original Walkman, the second-gen Walkman was released, aka the WM-2. It went on sale in February 1981, for ¥32,000. The WM-2, unlike the original, was not