A few months ago Christophe ran into an old Sony Walkman, the WM-EX14 manufactured by Sony in the 90s. The EX14 was identical to the EX17 but with Dolby noise reduction circuitry.

This product wasn’t meant to be a high-end product but a mass-production player for anybody, sturdy enough to resist small falls with an 8 hours battery life with a pair of “AA” sized dry cells because of innovations in semiconductor technology making the chipset more efficient with lowered power consumption.

When we opened it we were stunned to see so little parts. After doing a few research on this player, we realised that it was all the innovation of this device. Sony wanted as little parts as possible and replaced and replaced as many metal parts as they could with plastic ones. Indeed Sony wanted to make a greener product with less moving parts in order to make it more durable and less prone to failures. This also made this music player lighter and more easy to carry around in your “pocket”.