In a parallel universe, this very day, somebody asks, "Is that your Walkman?" and gets the reply, "Yes, but actually it's only an iPod, not a real Walkman,"
Extremely successful companies often become a victim of their own successes when they refuse to respond to change.. because it threatens and cannibalises their own success for some time.. And the short term oriented stockholders don't allow that hard decision... And sometimes the same old faggots running the company don't see change conning from their rose tinted glasses.. There are so many examples... Sony, nokia, infosys! Maybe next is Apple?
I personally don't think sony getting booted out of the mp3 market had anything to do with marketing.. Sony ignored iTunes initially because they owned Sony BMG.. Nobody thought it was smart to give away a song at 99 cents when you can sell the album at 10x the price... But guess what.. People wanted just a few songs from that album.. and the rest is history.. Fact is apple was wiped out from the mass market before iPod... It was the product through which it came out of the graphics designer's cabins into every household... And then innovations followed..
