A Japanese digital lifestyle site BCN ranking reports that Sony Walkman's sales surpassed that of iPod, the first time in 4 years and 8 months (242 weeks!) in Japan.

source: BCN Ranking (Obviously, Red = Apple, Blue = Sony)

The site takes weekly survey of approximately 40% of electronic stores in Japan from their POS database, so I believe it is a pretty good statistics.

The article says that while as a single model, iPod Nano 8GB has by far the largest share (21.7%), but Sony added a whole lineup of new variations with new colors and added functionality, thus taking large chunk of top 10 models, and combining them together, Sony devices sold more than iPod in the late August week.

It also says that iPhone is not included in this number and that the Apple fans are now more divided between iPod and iPhone, after iPhone was introduced in Japan in July 2008.

Does anyone know how Walkman doing in the U.S. at all?? I really don't hear that name recently.

Michi