Sony Pulls the Plug on Its Original Walkman
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}After more than 30 years, Sony has pulled the plug on its iconic Walkman, the original portable cassette-tape player, the New York Post reported Sunday.
The electronics company made its last shipment of the tape players to the Japanese market earlier this year, and once those are sold off, there will not be any more to come, according to Japanese media reports.
Sony claims to have sold over 400 million Walkmans worldwide as of March 2010, 200,020,000 of which were cassette-based models, reported tech news site Crunchgear.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Sony has, however, outsourced some Walkman manufacturing to a Chinese company for sales to people who still use obsolete cassette tapes.
Launched in 1979, the Walkman became a global hit and a symbol of tech cool, with Sony selling roughly 220 million of the boxy devices.
Modern MP3 players like the iPod eventually trumped the Walkman and portable disc players -- despite Sony's effort to market a digital version of the 1980s staple.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Read more at the New York Post.