July 1 - 1:35pm EDT   Versions of the Sony Walkman have now been on sale for 30 years, notes Agence France-Presse. The first version of the product went on sale July 1st 1979, based on the sketches of engineer Nobutoshi Kihara, and sold 30,000 units in two months. By 1989 cumulative Walkman sales had exceeded 50 million, and today, numbers are said to be over 385 million. The company has since lost much of its ground to Apple, which has sold over 200 million iPods in eight years. [full story]

June 29 - 9:00am EDT   Sony is just now developing a gaming-themed phone that would be targeted explicitly at the iPhone, Japan's Nikkei BP said this weekend. The company is supposedly creating a device team as soon as July that would merge the gaming qualities of the PSP with its Sony Ericsson handsets. It's implied that the device would have a touchscreen to better position the device against Apple's hardware. [full story]

June 16 - 5:00pm EDT   Sony has recently taken the wraps off its latest portable music player, the Walkman NWZ-B142F (JE) Zappin, which is effectively an update to the company's B-series players. Chief among the changes is a Zap button that is also found on other Walkman players, such as the W series, that lets users find tracks by listening to five-second samples. The Zappin has an integrated USB interface and contains 2GB of memory that is filled simply by users dragging and dropping MP3 and WMA audio files into it, without having to install any special syncing software. An FM tuner is built in, as is a voice and FM radio recorder. [full story]

June 8 - 7:50am EDT   Sony has been porting Android with the idea of bringing it to the Walkman and other devices, according to claims made on Monday. Calling it an "open secret," Impress says Google's OS is due both on the media player and for other products, likely appearing next year. The aim would be to produce a common platform that could be shared between devices; the Walkman and Mylo communicator are similar, for example, but right now need to use different operating systems and end up duplicating efforts. [full story]

June 3 - 3:35pm EDT   Sony Ericsson today said it has brought the W995a Walkman phone to Americans as an unlocked device. The slider is Sony Ericsson's most advanced non-touch media phone and has 3G, an 8.1-megapixel camera and Wi-Fi to complement its signature music jukebox app. In US form, it comes with both native AT&T 3G as well as Sony's just-launched Media Go software for loading tracks. [full story]

May 28 - 2:40pm EDT   Canadian wireless provider Rogers announced it is the exclusive retailer of two new advanced Sony Ericsson handsets, including the country's first 8.1-megapixel camera phone, the C905a, and the W705 Walkman. The C905 is touted as a camera with phone functionality, and apart from its large megapixel count, offers face detection, smile shutter and geotagging capabilities through its GPS. A Xenon flash is also built in. [full story]

May 13 - 8:35am EDT   Sony today finally launched its first competition against the iPod touch in the US with the shipment of its Walkman X1000 series and the addition of a new, last-minute feature. In addition to a web browser and YouTube streaming video, the touchscreen Walkman now has a built-in Slacker Radio app; similar to Slacker's own device, the X1000 subscribes to music channels that automatically cache whenever the player is connected to Wi-Fi, supplying it with enough music to continue playing offline. It works with Slacker's free, three-channel service as well as its paid service, which gives more more control and lyrics while removing ads. [full story]

May 8 - 4:00pm EDT   A product page on Sony's rewards website reveals the US pricing for the electronics giant's OLED touchscreen Walkman X digital audio players. According to the product page, the 16GB NWZ-X1051FBLK will cost SonyRewards members 29,995 points, which translates to nearly $300, while the 32GB NWZ-X1061FBLK model will cost 39,995 points, or $399. The prices are roughly consistent with costs for existing touchscreen players like the iPod touch. [full story]

April 21 - 9:25am EDT   Sony on Tuesday updated its range of USB Walkman E-series personal music players with a slight redesign and a new model with a higher capacity, at 8GB, the NW-E044. There is also the 2GB NW-E042 and the 4GB NW-E043; each new Walkman includes one extra interchangeable skin, or what Sony calls a Style-UP Panel, with more available for purchase separately. There will be five bundles available at launch, each with two skins of different color and style. [full story]

April 14 - 10:10am EDT   Sony on Tuesday announced the Japanese pricing and release dates for its two Walkman NX-X1000 series media players first introduced at the start of the year at CES. The NW-X1050, which has 16GB of built-in flash memory, will cost the equivalent of about $403, while the 32GB NW-X1060 will cost $503. Either will be available in red or black when they are released on April 25th. [full story]

April 7 - 8:30am EDT   Sony Ericsson in the wake of CTIA has launched a pair of starter phones targeted alternately at music and photography. The W205 is billed as a first Walkman phone and lifts up Sony Ericsson's low end with more essential features: it supports music playback on Memory Stick Micro cards up to 2GB, an FM radio, a 1.3-megapixel camera and basic Bluetooth. Data is limited to GPRS but is helped by preloading Opera Mini rather than the usual and less compatible NetFront browser. It ships worldwide, including the Americas, during the summer. [full story]

March 30 - 3:35pm EDT   Sony Japan has recently announced the upcoming release of a pair of Blu-ray Disc recorders, the 500GB BDZ-A950 and 320GB BDZ-A750. Both support the acTVila video delivery service for digital TVs in Japan, and have the ability to export recorded or downloaded content onto Sony's portable multimedia devices, including the PSP gaming console and Walkman devices. As well, Sony says content recorded from analog broadcasts or other that does not contain copy protection signals can be sent to cellphones. [full story]

March 10 - 5:15pm EDT   At a press conference in China, Sony Ericsson unintentionally showed slides of as-yet-unreleased and unannounced handsets, including the T707, codenamed Elle, as well as the M610. The pages reveal the T707 is a quad-band GSM and dual-band UMTS/HSPA handset and is due to sport a 2.2-inch display. Storage will come from a 1GB Memory Stick Micro card, while the operating system will be OSE from Enea. There is still no word of when the T707 will launch, although it is expected to be fairly soon and in at least five colors. [full story]

March 9 - 1:30pm EDT   Sony has finally posted up a product page for its NWZ-X1000 series Walkman MP3 player, albeit in Hong Kong, revealing it will sport a 3-inch OLED display that plays video at 320x240 even though the hardware supports a larger 432x240 resolution. On that energy efficient screen, users will be able of watching MPEG-4, H.264 and WMV format videos or browse the Internet and watch YouTube videos thanks to the Walkman's already recognized Wi-Fi. Unfortunately, videos are only playable up to 2GB in size. [full story]

March 2 - 10:25pm EST   As part of a round of updates, Sony this evening updated its Blu-ray lineup with two players and two home theaters, half of which focus on wireless as the central feature. The BDP-S560 movie reader is one of the first Blu-ray devices with 802.11n Wi-Fi that lets it access BD-Live special features, player upgrades or DLNA-supporting media sources on the local network without either requiring an Ethernet cable or sacrificing relative speed. It and the lower-end BDP-S360 nonetheless have Ethernet connections for a physical link. [full story]