继今年3月停产计算机软盘之后，日本索尼公司停止了另一项已过时技术产品的制造和销售——卡带随身听。

索尼卡带随身听

　　After retiring the floppy disk in March, Sony has halted the manufacture and distribution of another now-obsolete technology: the cassette Walkman, the first low-cost, portable music player.

　　继今年3月停产计算机软盘之后，日本索尼公司停止了另一项已过时技术产品的制造和销售——卡带随身听。卡带随身听可谓史上第一款低成本便携式音乐播放器。 　　

索尼CD播放器

　　The final batch was shipped to Japanese retailers in April. Once these units are sold, new cassette Walkmans will no longer be available through the manufacturer.

　　据报道，最后一批卡带随身听于今年4月运给了日本零售商。一旦这些产品销售完，制造商将不再提供新的产品。

索尼MP3

　　The first generation Walkman was released on July 1, 1979 in Japan. Although it later became a huge success, it only sold 3,000 units in its first month. Sony managed to sell some 200 million iterations of the cassette Walkman over the product line's 30-year career.

　第一代索尼随身听于1979年7月1日在日本开始发售。第1个月里只被售出了约3000台，随后该产品取得巨大成功。在长达30年的时间里，索尼公司售出的一代代卡带随身听总共约2亿台。

CD播放器

　　Somewhat ironically, the announcement was delivered just one day ahead of the iPod's ninth anniversary on October 23, although the decline of the cassette Walkman is attributed primarily to the explosive popularity of CD players in the 1990s, not the iPod.

　　巧合的是，在这一声明发表后的第2天，美国苹果公司的音乐播放器iPod迎来了问世9周年的纪念日。不过众所周知，卡带随身听的衰退主要归因于上世纪90年代CD播放器的爆炸性大流行，而并不是因为iPod的发明。