Manufacturers
List of companies, brands making walkmans
Sony
SONY has been the first brand in releasing a Walkman to the market, on 1979. It's been a very sucessful business for them, as they managed to sell over 400 million Walkmans worldwide until March 2010. Half of those (200,020,000 exactly) were cassette-based models.
Sanyo
Sanyo was an "also ran" during the Walkman heyday but the make’s models offered decent sound quality and plenty of features, usually below the MSRP of the leaders’ models. "Sanyo" translates to three oceans in English. In the early '80s, their personal stereo line was a strong one worldwide but success for the company petered out in North America and Europe. Sanyo continued in Japan and returned to worldwide distribution in the '90s with a super-cheap discount line.
Aiwa
AIWA has been one of the most valuable makers of walkmans in the history. They have made some of the finest models, including most "world's 1st" walkmans (models which had a breaking new technology for the first time). The 80's decade was the most sucessful one before the Compact Disc takes the lead and SONY acquired the company.
Sharp
The line was discontinued after 1981, but the Optonica line was again re-introduced in the late 1980s for a high end line of television receivers and higher quality mass market audio products such as VCR's, surround sound receivers, CD cassette boom boxes, and portable cassette players.
