How long is the product life cycle?

In a digital music age, it is always amusing to the students when I bring in my cassette player and show them the cutting-edge technology that was the Sony Walkman. But Sony have just announced that they have stopped production of these icons, after what I can only imagine has been a relatively long decline stage.

I was actually surprised that they were still being produced, but as the article says, there is still some demand in Japan (and other places) from the elderly. Thirty plus years is a pretty decent run for a product (introduced in July 1979) and lifetime sales were 220 million units although this can be compared to ipod sales with 270 million units in the past nine years. And it is worth noting that the cassette player is not completely dead, while production in Japan has stopped, there will still be some production in China for those consumers around the world that still think that music through a cassette is worth listening to, although somehow I don’t think it will ever match the nostalgia of vinyl!

It may also be worth a discussion in terms of extension strategies of a brand vs a product - the walkman brand lives on in sony’s range of mp3 players and is using karaoke to gain a unique selling point.