Sony has been making Walkman music players at their fabled Saitama plant since the first TPS-L2 models rolled off the lines there in July of 1979 … but no more. In a sign of the times, Sony has just announced that it will shut down this 1 remaining Walkman manufacturing facility that is located in Japan, and place-shift all production to China and Malaysia. Labor costs in those countries are bottom-line-friendly, at less than one-fifth of that in Japan.
Coincidentally, and on the following day, Sony announced a 47% increase in quarterly profits, thanks largely to a weaker yen and strong sales of the PSP game console. Conspicuously absent from the list of contributers to Sony’s bottom line was any mention of the Walkman product line, which remains mired at a domestic market share of only 15%. Sony has yet to find a way to dislodge this immovable object called Walkman from the irresistible force of the Apple iPod. With half of the domestic portable music market, the iPod is doing well in Japan – Asahi Shimbun attributes this largely to the ease of use provided by iPod and iTunes. The newspaper goes on to say that iPods even occupy 20% of the first floor sales space in the famous Yodobashi Camera gadget super-store.
Sony to stop making Walkmans in Japan, shift all production to China, Malaysia – Mainichi Daily News, January 25, 2006
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I’m surprised Japan doesn’t do something to lower business costs. They could definitely recapture some of the magic they had in the 80′s that way.