Sony Walkman declared dead in Japan

japan-After 31 years and over 200 million units sold, Sony is officially putting the cassette model Walkman out to pasture. Introduced in 1979, the portable tape player defined the following 10-plus years of mobile music playback. It was even a leader in the era of optical media, with its Walkman line of portable CD players eventually known as Discman. But in the era of the iPod, the brand name has diminished in value. Radios and digital media players still go by the name Walkman, but the moniker has always referred to the tape-playing model in the collective mind.