portable media players timeline.

Feb 9, 1877

Thomad Edison creates phonograph
Apr 23, 1888

German inventor Emile Berliner's gramophone displaced the phonograph by utilizing the then mass produced flat discs such as LP records.
Sep 13, 1925

ew technology gave rise to electric record players which dominated the industry as it no longer relied on a manual hand crank.
Feb 9, 1965

8-track tapes were the first attempts to bring music out of households onto the streets via automobiles. They are also known as the 'car audio'.
Nov 16, 1978

ony ushered in an era which completely altered the music industry when they popularised the Walkman 'Soundabout' - a portable audio cassette player capable of Hi-Fi stereo sound.
Apr 7, 1983

Again introduced by Sony together with Philips, glossy and shiny CD players, also known as the Discman, eventually replaced cassette players by the end of the 1980s with their superiority in sound quality and ability to skip tracks.
Dec 16, 1995

Rewritable CDs were introduced which allowed for mixed CDs, boosting the popularity of Discmans.
Dec 11, 1998

The dawn of the MPMan was the first flash mp3 player to be released by a Korean company which allowed high quality digital music recording that could be transferred from computers to portable layers.
May 7, 1999

ompaq introduced the first hard-drive based mp3 player which deviated from the flash drive norm.
Oct 12, 2001

Apple joined the market with the iPod Classic comprising of 5/10GB of space and a mechanical scroll wheel.
Sep 13, 2004

iPod Classic Generation 2 pioneered the use of touch sensitive controls to scroll through playlists. Zen Touch followed.
Aug 12, 2005

Like Discmans and minidiscs, mp3 players become smaller with the emergence of players such as iPod Mini, Nano and even Shuffle.
Jul 7, 2007

iPod Video, Zen Vision, iRiver and several other brands of players successfully introduce video playbacks on their players which Archos failed to realise earlier.
Oct 15, 2008

iPod Touch marks a whole new beginning for the media player industry with never before heard capabilities, legal third party applications and organisation tools all fully controlled by a touch screen.

Thomad Edison creates phonograph

German inventor Emile Berliner's gramophone displaced the phonograph by utilizing the then mass produced flat discs such as LP records.

ew technology gave rise to electric record players which dominated the industry as it no longer relied on a manual hand crank.

8-track tapes were the first attempts to bring music out of households onto the streets via automobiles. They are also known as the 'car audio'.

ony ushered in an era which completely altered the music industry when they popularised the Walkman 'Soundabout' - a portable audio cassette player capable of Hi-Fi stereo sound.

Again introduced by Sony together with Philips, glossy and shiny CD players, also known as the Discman, eventually replaced cassette players by the end of the 1980s with their superiority in sound quality and ability to skip tracks.

Rewritable CDs were introduced which allowed for mixed CDs, boosting the popularity of Discmans.

The dawn of the MPMan was the first flash mp3 player to be released by a Korean company which allowed high quality digital music recording that could be transferred from computers to portable layers.

ompaq introduced the first hard-drive based mp3 player which deviated from the flash drive norm.

Apple joined the market with the iPod Classic comprising of 5/10GB of space and a mechanical scroll wheel.

iPod Classic Generation 2 pioneered the use of touch sensitive controls to scroll through playlists. Zen Touch followed.

Like Discmans and minidiscs, mp3 players become smaller with the emergence of players such as iPod Mini, Nano and even Shuffle.

iPod Video, Zen Vision, iRiver and several other brands of players successfully introduce video playbacks on their players which Archos failed to realise earlier.

iPod Touch marks a whole new beginning for the media player industry with never before heard capabilities, legal third party applications and organisation tools all fully controlled by a touch screen.