Sony Corp. Thursday unveiled a new line of Walkmans capable of downloading digital music from the Internet.
Scheduled to hit the market this holiday season, the two new models will be accompanied by a host of enhanced features for CD and cassette Walkmans.
Sony (SNE) told Bloomberg it hopes the new generation of personal players will keep up
with the fast-changing recording technology, a vein MP3 (MPPP) has tapped by making more than 500,000 songs available for download on the Net.
The audio juggernaut believes such digital distribution in tandem with the tremendous popularity of the Walkman will make Sony a major player in the online music business.
The new Walkman has a “memory stick,” a small storage device that holds
data in digital form which can be plugged into many Sony products,
including laptops.
Both models and enhancements will be released Friday in New York to
coincide with the 20th anniversary of Sony’s offering of the Walkman to the public.
An analysis completed by Jupiter Communications estimates that music sold off the Net may accrue as much as $147 million in sales over the next four years.