Disruptive Product Innovation Strategy: The Case of Portable Digital Music Player

Trends Of Portable Music Player Disruption

In 1979, Sony released the first portable music player called the Walkman, which was a cassette player that replaced the bulky music players known as the boom box (Sony 2011). When the first Walkman was introduced, many people claimed it would not sell as it did not have a recording function. However, consumers took to playing their music through a portable device in the 80′s. The term Walkman even entered English usage as a portable cassette player. It was not long after that, five years later in 1984, the first portable CD player was introduced by Sony and the portable music player market was dominated by Sony for a long time (Sony 2011). However, the portable music player market started losing its influence over consumers after the mp3 music format became popular (Lasser et al 2006). Consumers started using various online sites and P2P programs illegally to download their favourite songs in mp3 format. Many manufacturers introduced mp3 players but people were still downloading mp3 songs in an illegal way (through P2P programs such as Napster) and the mp3 devices could not store a great number of songs.