Content area
Full text
The painfully long subway ride. The excruciatingly boring family road trip. The endless strolls up and down school hallways. If you've spent any time around teens and young adults, you know their one-word solution to these problems: music.
For people 14 to 26, tuning out the world is as simple as pressing the play button. They've grown up with the Sony Walkman, which celebrated its 25th anniversary last year. They are the largest single consumers of portable music players, namely CD players. For youth, the technology is no novelty. They're as comfortable with having headphones in their ears as they are shoes on their feet.
That's why a fierce battle has erupted between Sony and Panasonic for portable CD player supremacy. Panasonic has held the No. 1 position for years. The battle usually heats up in spring and early summer when the warm weather and school's end bring kids outdoors. Their desire to bring their music with them, and their willingness to spend their allowance and birthday money making sure they do it in style, has made for a growing and lucrative business.
Both companies launched new TV campaigns this past spring. Sony's introduces consumers to a new feature called "g-protection." The new Sony CD Walkman, formerly Discman, claims to have eliminated the skipping problem of earlier models and is better able to compete with Panasonic's Shockwave. John McCarter, general manager of advertising and corporate communications at Sony Canada in Toronto, admits the portable part of earlier players was "a...