Sony Corp. on Tuesday unveiled its new X-series of Walkman digital music players featuring a touch-screen interface and a 3-inch organic display in an attempt to regain dominance in a market usurped by Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod.
The new NW-X1000 series, which comes in red and black, will hit store shelves in Japan on April 25 and in the United States, Europe and Canada from early summer, the company said.
In addition to the organic light-emitting diode screen, which it says has brighter color resolution and contrast, the X-series boasts a string of new features, including Wi-Fi wireless Internet access and a menu featuring a connection to the video site YouTube.
It also has a digital amplifier and noise-canceling technologies that improves listening performance with ear buds, Sony said.
The NW-X1060 model with 32 gigabytes of storage is expected to be priced at around ¥50,000, while the 16-gigabyte NW-X1050 is expected to cost around ¥40,000.
Sony officials said the new Walkman series is mainly targeted at men in their late 20s to 40s.
Brushing aside the new Walkman's resemblance to the iPod, Atsushi Noda, a marketing manager at Sony Marketing (Japan) Inc., said the iPod is more geared toward people who want to use games and features other than a music player, while the Sony model focuses on core features like sound and image quality.
