Sony Walkman

Cargill Dow has some commercial applications in Europe and Asia. A major market has been blister packaging used to wrap such products as Sony Walkman radios and digital versatile discs (DVDs). 

When your customers are satisfied with your existing solutions, this is an important strategy to pursue. Customers were fairly satisfied with Sony Walkman and MP3 players to perform the job of listening to music. However, they were not satisfied with related jobs such as bro wse music choices available for download, organize music, share music with friends, and discard unwanted music. This created an opportunity for Apple to bring iPod/iTunes to the marketplace. 

Sanderson, S., and Uzumeri, M. (1995), Managing Product Families The Case of the Sony Walkman, Research Policy, Vol. 24, pp. 761-782. 

Market surveys showed that the Sony Walkman would fail. 

Pieztinka (2011) offers the Sony Walkman as an example of a product platform. Sony included customer segments as assets, and created three product platforms to build miniature Walkman, to create a new market for hi-fi enthusiasts, and to build models for price sensitive customers. Each of these platforms includes a shared set of modules - motor, tape, and drive. Sony added attributes such as radio, remote-control, and music-search to differentiate the products. 

Until recently, halogen-free products were only available in Europe, but Sony has now adopted global design specifications to ensure that all their projects meet the same standards. Sony aims to have all product lines free of brominated flame retardants by the end of 2005 if substitutes are found to be safer. They also aim to phase out all uses of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) by 2005 as well as lead solder, and specified heavy metals. For example, a Walkman model has PVC-free cables and no brominated flame retardants or lead solder in the printed circuit board. 

The first cassette Walkman TPS-L2 is invented by Masaru Ibuka of Sony Compact disk players are introduced by PhiUps... 

Derivative products are the products that are designed around a platform product. For example, Sony designed over 200 Walkman products, based on three platforms, to meet the specific needs of global markets. The economic proposition for derivative products is to reduce cost by reducing features (low-cost products), or to add features without changing the price significantly (line extensions), or to add features to increase the value to the customer (superior products). 

PLA also finds applications in office automation equipment and electrical appliances. For instance, Sony adopted PLA to make the chassis of a portable audio player "Walkman in 2002 by injection molding. 

An impressive approach to the issue of obsolescence is attributed to Akio Morita, the co-foimder of Sony and inventor of the Walkman. He believed that it was his job to make his own products obsolete before competitors did so. In effect, not only was his aim to make innovative products, he also sought to build on this success in the knowledge that if he did not then someone else soon would. 

FIG. 84 Representative product examples at Sony Corporation manufactured with lead-free assembly, a) MD walkman, b) color television, c) Playstation 2, d) Network Handicam digital camcorder, e) DVD player, f) mobile phone, g) VAIO-SR notebook personal computer, h) AIBO entertainment robots. (From Ref 45.)... 

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