Sony bringing back Walkman

If you are a music fanatic and money is no issue, you might want to consider a Sony Walkman. Seriously.

Sony’s new ZX2 Walkman costs $1,119.99, and it plays music at a super-high resolution. That means songs on Sony’s new Walkman sound more life-like than the typical CD, MP3 or streaming media file, which are compressed to fit into a smaller, downloadable package.

Sony (SNE) says the new Walkman comes with audio technology that “can reproduce master quality recordings just as the artists originally intended.” The company also claims that the Walkman makes regular, non-high-resolution music files sound better.

Sony ZX2

“The new Walkman ZX2 is a great example of the quality of our high-res audio offerings,” said Mike Fasulo, president of Sony Electronics USA, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. “This Walkman is tailored for outstanding sound, and every piece of material and component has been crafted to realize the ultimate high-res audio experience on the move.”

For all its technical marvels, the new Walkman curiously runs “Jelly Bean,” a version of Android that came out in July 2013. New Android devices are running software that is two generations ahead of that.

But the Walkman’s 128 GB of storage is pretty spacious. Even though the music files are larger, that’s enough space to hold just fewer than 2,000 songs. And it comes with a micro SD card slot for even more storage. It is Wi-Fi capable and has 60 hours of battery life.

The Walkman ZX2 will be available this spring. It will go toe-to-toe with other high-resolution portable music offerings, including Neil Young’s Pono player and music store.

Rebranding the Walkman as a high-resolution media player is Sony’s umpteenth attempt to resuscitate the iconic brand. The Walkman never went away, though it has faded from the spotlight. Over the past decade, Sony has released Walkman-branded headphones, MP3 players and phones.

The original TPS-L2 Walkman debuted on July 1, 1979. The portable cassette player revolutionized how people listen to music. The Walkman wasn’t the first of its kind, but it was the first affordable and manageable portable music player — others like the German Stereobelt were too clunky and expensive, so they never took off.

The Walkman continued to sell well even through the CD era. Innovations like the 1981 Walkman II — barely bigger than a cassette tape — and the 1984 Discman helped Sony stay on top of the portable music world. But sales began to plummet soon after Apple unveiled the iPod in 2001 and digital downloads began to dominate.

How low will oil fall? $30 is possible

Look out below! The plunge in oil prices may not be over just yet.

Oil took another hit Wednesday, sinking below $53 to a level last seen during the Great Recession. It’s hard to recall that crude oil traded for over $100 a barrel as recently as July.

Few saw the energy meltdown coming. Now that it’s here, industry analysts warn another move lower is possible as the momentum remains firmly to the downside.

“If this doesn’t hold, we could go back to price levels in late 2008 and early 2009 — down in the $30s. There’s no reason why it couldn’t happen,” said Darin Newsom, senior analyst at Telvent DTN.

That would be good news for the overall U.S. economy, especially consumers who are saving money each time they fill up their gas tanks. If oil fell to around $40 a barrel, that would translate to a national gas average of roughly $1.80 a gallon.

Yet lower prices are also pinching the oil industry, including the previously red-hot Texan economy and high-cost U.S. shale and Canadian oil sands producers. Several thousand layoffs in the energy sector have already been announced.

Why is oil so cheap? The oil plunge has been fueled largely by excess supply caused by the North American energy revolution.

In an effort to squeeze these new players and maintain market share, OPEC exacerbated the oversupply problem by deciding to keep production steady in late November.

“It really is pretty mathematical. There is more oil than we need,” said Tamar Essner, energy analyst at Nasdaq Advisory Services.

Slowing demand for oil: The world’s appetite for oil no longer looks insatiable. That’s largely due to the slowing Chinese economy. The country’s oil demand had been growing at incredible rates, but now it’s in the low single digits.

“Their economy is maturing. Just by definition it’s going to need less oil,” said Essner.

Global demand is also being slowed by the fact that the U.S. and other mature economies have become more fuel efficient.

“If you look out your window and watch cars going by you don’t see huge gas guzzlers as much. When the market spiked to $140, we actually saw a change in consumer habits,” said Newsom.

Now that the U.S. and Canada have moved towards energy independence, scary headlines out of the Middle East no longer seem to spook the energy markets. The so-called “geopolitical risk premium” built into the price of oil has all but vanished.

“So much supply was contingent on the Middle East where there was always the potential for things to go haywire,” said Essner.

She pointed to recent supply disruptions in Libya that had no impact on oil prices. In fact, prices kept dropping.

What’s next: This is hardly the first time oil prices have suffered a dramatic tumble. A supply glut and economic turmoil in Asia caused prices to collapse in the late 1990s.

One key difference between then and now is how much oil has grown as an asset class for investors.

That could increase the chances of a downward spiral as investors panic and dump their holdings, said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service.

“If panic hits those financial companies that have a lot of exposure to oil on the upside, the numbers you may think are burlesque or hyperbole like $35 or even $25 suddenly become real possibilities, if only for a brief period of time,” said Kloza. “Anything can happen in 2015.”

via How low will oil fall? $30 is possible – Dec. 31, 2014.