Sony dominated the portable music player market with the Walkman and Discman but failed to adapt to the MP3 format and the iPod. Sony relied on its own proprietary formats and software instead of MP3s and failed to create software as user-friendly as iTunes. This was partly due to Sony's inability to collaborate between divisions and transform its explicit knowledge into innovations, as Apple did through partnerships.

1. WHAT WAS THE EFFECT OF KNOWLEDGE
MANAGEMENT ON SONY’S MP3 PLAYER CRISIS?
Necip Fazıl Keskinkılıç

2. HISTORY OF MP3 INDUSTRY AND THE ROLE OF SONY
Before the iPod became ubiquitous, there was the
“Walkman”. The portable cassette players, (small, personal
and portable) introduced in 1979, sold 200 million units,
rocked the recording industry and fundamentally changed
how people experienced music.
In 1990s technology had changed and cassettes left its place to
Compact Disc but Sony rapidly adapted itself to produce
walkmans running with CD too. They call it “Discman”
In 1998 as the flash memory market started to warm up, Sony
introduced Memory Stick and .
In 2001, IPods were announced and launched, it aggressively entered
the music industry and there wasn’t any trend like putting cassettes
or CD into the devices. With IPods, people explored to listen to music
without CD and cassette this is where Sony frustrated by failure but
biggest reason behind this failure is that; one of Sony’s biggest
problems has long been its failure to make great software that runs its
great-looking hardware.

3. In 2001, the digital music game changed, and Sony was no
longer driving progress. As the world caught on to MP3s,
Sony kept pushing its own format called ATRAC, and terrible
software to manage your music library and devices
Discman to IPod
A decade later, the iPod’s scroll wheel UI, iconic design, fun name,
and great ads get a lot of credit for its success. But I think the
simple and free iTunes software was just as important: You could
very easily rip CDs, organize MP3s, and sync them to an iPod. It
was elegant enough for anyone to use, and Sony and everyone
else didn’t really have anything like it.

4. WHAT WAS THE EFFECT OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
ON SONY’S MP3 PLAYER CRISIS
Sony is a company using explicit knowledge during the
Walkman and Discman time so that many firms had copied
Sony’s way of producing mp3 player
Management theorists suggest that; “tacit
knowledge contributes to innovation”

5. COMBINATION - CONNECTING
Move from explicit to explicit
This transformation phase can be best supported by
technology. Explicit knowledge can be easily captured and
then distributed/transmitted to worldwide audience.
 Sony’s problems go much deeper. Its troubled partnership
with Ericsson set it back when the smartphone revolution
was taking off. Its inability to collaborate between multiple
divisions was a huge handicap.
Today, Sony seems to be increasingly leaning on Google to
provide software.

6. APPLE VERSUS SONY: A VICTORY FOR
COLLABORATION

7. RECOMMENDATIONS
Create own software
Separated departments have to work in connection
Integrated work
Trend has to be followed regularly