About two weeks ago we reported Sony’s Walkman (kind of) outsold the iPod in Japan for the first time in four years, and now Sony steps up their efforts in the portable media player arena by officially introducing the Walkman A [JP] and S series [JP, pictured]. Sony says their twelve new devices are specifically aimed at “young customers”. Both series display lyrics that scroll as a song is played and have to be downloaded from the web (costing between $0.15 and $0.25 per text).
Three of those twelve new models are part of the A series (pictured above). The A series Walkman will have 2.8-inch OEL displays (240×400 resolution), and buyers can choose between models with 16GB (Japanese street price: $260), 32GB ($330) and 64GB ($440) memory. These players are just 7.2mm thick, weigh 62g and will be available in either black or brown.
The S series Walkman are considerably cheaper, selling between $160 and $280 (but you’ll only get 2-inch LCD screens with 240×320 resolution instead of OLEDs). The nine models in these series will have between eight and 32GB of memory and support MP3/ WMA/ATRAC/ATRAC Advanced Lossless/PCM/AAC and HE-AAC music files. Video formats supported are MPEG-4, AVC（H.264/AVC) and WMV. The Walkman S models will be offered in various colors, weigh 53g and 195g with the cradle speaker they come with (pictured below).
Sony Japan promo video for the A series:
http://www.sony.jp/video/player.swf
Sony Japan promo video for the S series: