Manufacturers
List of companies, brands making walkmans
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.
AKAI
Based in Hong Kong, although founded in Japan, it is manufacturer of consumer electronics. It was founded as Akai Electric Company Ltd in Tokyo, in 1946. After the collapse in 2000, the Akai brand is owned by Grande Holdings which distributes various electronic products. The "Akai Professional" electronic instrument division was spun off in 1999, after the company had already left the audio business in 1991.
Kenwood
This Japanese brand of consumer electronics is since 2011 owned by JVCKenwood, when Kenwood Corporation merged with JVC (Victor). They manufacture predominantly audio equipment such as cassette tape decks/recorders, radios, speakers, and other consumer electronics.
Panasonic
Both National and Panasonic were brands carried by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. Various electronic devices, amongst others portable cassette players and recorders, were released initially under the National brand, and changed around the mid 80s to Panasonic. In 2008, the name of holding company was changed to Panasonic.
Philips
The company that invented the portable cassette format in the 60s.
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.
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.
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.
Toshiba
This Japanese conglomerate was one of the oldest and largest active in consumer electronics. During that era, it produced many components like semiconductors that are commonly found in portable tape devices from most manufactures. It also released one of the first IBM-compatible laptops in the 80s.