Sony's TPS-L2 Walkman cassette player, released in July 1979, let you listen to prerecorded music while on the go. (Courtesy Sony Electronics)

Many people will be shocked to learn that Sony has decided to stop manufacturing the last model of its iconic portable music player, the Walkman, in Japan. I know I was stunned, not because I think it’s time to discontinue the portable cassette player but because I’d assumed Sony had already given up on it.

In the 1980s, Sony’s Walkman was immensely popular. I always wanted one (especially the water-resistant bright-yellow Sports line), and settled for devices by other manufacturers. Nonetheless, it was a must-have gadget for kids on the go for many years. Sony later introduced players that would let people take their compact discs and MiniDiscs with them, and then went all-digital — the company currently has a Walkman-branded MP3 player.

The Wall Street Journal’s Daisuke Wakabayashi wrote about Sony’s decision in a blog post. Apparently there’s been little fanfare from the company itself, but the home page for the latest Walkman tape player on Sony’s Japanese site said production has ended. Thus ends the life of a family of gadgets that sold more than 220 million units around the world and eventually inspired Apple’s iPod, which eventually took Sony’s lead in selling portable music players, according to Leander Kahney of Cult of Mac, who quoted former Apple CEO John Sculley as part of an interview. Today’s digital music players are far more flexible, can hold far more music than a single cassette and are much smaller than the Walkmans Walkmen portable tape players.

Wakabayashi said Sony is outsourcing the production of Walkman cassette players in China for sale in the Middle East and Asia. The company is continuing to make other types of cassette players, however. But unless a resurgence in the popularity of cassette tapes spurs growth in the industry, it seems unlikely that Sony will ramp up production significantly on the iconic tape player that so many of us used to carry around.

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