Sony Walkman
May 19th, 2008
The original Sony Walkman was marketed in 1979. It was engineered by Sony for co-chairman Morita so he could listen to opera music on long flights. A few years before this in Germany, Andreas Pavel invented a portable cassette player, the “stereobelt”. Andreas patented the stereobelt in 1978 in numerous other countries including the United States, United Kingdom, and Japan. For years Andreas fought Sony in legal battles and the Walkman brand expanded to other media formats. Discman and MiniDisc players were popular for a couple years until replaced by flash memory and hard drive based players. By 2003, Sony finally closed the case with Andreas Pavel. Sony agreed to compensate 10 million dollars and recognize Andreas Pavel as the original inventor of the Walkman. Pavel agreed to never file any future lawsuits in regards to the Walkman. Since then, the Walkman had little success competing in the portable audio market with devices such as the iPod. Towards the end of 2005, Sony released their first mobile phone which includes MP3 playback. Sony mastered and now dominates the mobile phone & portable audio industry
