Sony marketing manager Atsushi Kubota said his company wants to promote a wide range of music players in the Walkman lineup, including various types of disks and memory cards, not just the hard drive. Global Walkman sales still total US$20 million a year, according to Sony, compared with more than 3.7 million iPods shipped worldwide so far.
This blurb from a Taipei Times article tries to make it seem like Sony is still in good shape (20M > 3.7M), but when you realize that it’s comparing dollar to unit sales you can see the gravity of the situation. At a conservative 1M units/yr @ $300 (I know it’s more and it’s going up), we’re talking about a 15x (and realistically, probably more like 20x) sales figure difference here. Sony is getting its ass completely handed to.
Don’t worry, I’m sure that converting all music to DRM’d ATRAC is the way to go. People love that.