The big companies are always gunning for a piece of Apple’s portable media player market. So far, the road is littered with more corpses than even 300 Spartans can kill. Sony is hoping that their zany Zappin Walkman, shaped like a USB flash drive will be the charm.

It comes with 2GB of storage space, featuring Sony’s Drag and Drop technology for easy file transfer, is compatible with MP3 and WMA file formats, and has an integrated FM Tuner.

Word on the street is that Sony has a possible Android-powered Sony Walkman coming soon. It sounds weird, but it’s very possible and it makes sense. Android doesn’t cost a penny and it’s highly customizable, with built-in media playback capabilities, and works great on touchscreen devices.

It’s a great way to spruce up some of their product lines and get some renewed interest. Did we mention that Android doesn’t cost anything? Yeah, this makes a lot of sense. But we’ll have to wait and see how it all turns out.

The Sony Walkman has been around for decades. When I was a kid, the name was tied to big yellow cassette tape players. Later the Walkman was a huge set of earphones with a silver antenna a mile long for tuning FM radio. Today the Walkman name is on mobile phones and MP3 players.

Sony has announced a new top-of-the-line Walkman MP3 player called the X-series. The series has integrated Wi-Fi, Slacker Radio, YouTube and integrated noise reduction technology. The device is optimized for both audio and video with a 3-inch OLED touch screen with high contrast and fast response rates.

Sony’s got a brand new walkman phone dubbed the W205. It will do all the usual stuff like displaying the album art with ID3 tags of the tracks that are playing. Some other features are the Opera browser, speaker phone and Bluetooth. I have to admit it looks pretty good with the 1.8 inch display screen.

The phone also sports a 1.3 megapixel camera with 2.2 X digital zoom and a video recorder. Sadly it’s available only in black. You’ll get a sufficient 5 MB of memory with up to 2GB memory expansion with a M2 card.

Everything is coming up Pink lately to appeal to the ladies. That’s why Sony is releasing their W series walkman MP3 players in pink.

The W Series Walkman MP3 Player is an all in one MP3 player and headphones combo that lets you jog and do all of the other stuff you do without having to worry about wires other than the one around your head. The W Series Walkman MP3 Player retails for $70.

Sony will be releasing two new Blu-ray recorders that offer support for a bunch of Sony gadgets. The 500GB BDZ-A950 and the 320GB BDZ-A750. It means you can export what you record or download to your Walkman devices, your PSP and some cell phones.

There’s also an accompanying Internet-based service called acTVila that allows you to download videos for a fee. Or, you can stream content for a smaller fee, but surprise, you can’t keep the content.

Sony just expanded the Walkman line with the NW-S730FK Series that consists of the 8GB NW-S738FK and the 4GB NW-S736FK. Both devices come with a somewhat small 2″ TFT display and support WMA, MP3, ATRAC, linear PCM, ATRAC Advanced Lossless, HE-AAC and AAC audio formats, while images are just JPEG.

If it’s video you like, it will handle movies and clips in AVC(H.264/AVC), Windows Media Video 9 and MPEG-4 formats. Your choice of black, gold, red or pink. No word yet on a release outside of Japan.

Sony Ericsson has confirmed the new and affordable W395 Walkman phone with a 2MP camera, Bluetooth, a stereo speakers, dedicated control keys for music, and FM Radio. Each purchase will also get you a 1GB memory card and HPM-64 Stereo headset.

The W395 Walkman supports GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 and will be available in selected markets from Q1 in Dusky Grey and Blush Titanium flavors.

Here is the first leaked picture of Sony Ericsson’s new Walkman-branded slider phone with metal housing. Known as the Hikaru, the music phone will be officially announced on February 15th 2009, before the MWC 2009, in Barcelona.

Some specs include a 2.6 inch display, an 8MP camera, Walkman player 4.0, stereo speakers, dedicated music keys, a 3.5mm headset jack and 8GB of internal memory. There’s no word on pricing yet, but it will be released in Q2 of ’09. That’s what we know right now.

Sony is all set to offer a completely different type of Walkman. This time it’s aimed at the budget conscious consumer who wants something to match their active lifestyle. The upcoming W-series Walkman has some nice aesthetics for such users. It sports 2GB of storage, and a low price point ($50-75).

The design looks a little too cutesy with the heart shape and all. It’s basically a sleek wrap around earphone that has magnetic connectors on each end to keep it bound together when not in use. That’s what forms the shape. What you see is the entire player. The earphones are 13.5mm EX quality, and currently supported codecs include MP3, AAC, WMA (w/ DRM) and PCM.

Sony’s Walkman NWZ-X1000 is a real looker. It features an OLED touchscreen, Wi-Fi and built-in noise cancellation and once again make the brand the world’s music player of choice, assuming the price is right. Like the iPod Touch, it comes in 16GB and 32GB and can be used to surf the web. The OLED screen’s a half inch smaller, so the colors should be brighter with better contrast.

It also comes with digital noise canceling, which is interesting. The feature, allows your 13.5mm EX headphone to block out ambient noise. It’s got all the right specs, but the price may be it’s downfall. If typical Sony pricing applies, this won’t compete with the iPod Touch.

Sony has been busy as usual. Apparently they’ve been working on a next-generation touch Walkman. Word is that it will feature 16 and 32GB of storage and be the new flagship music player at Sony. This will be the most advanced music, video and photo Walkman music player ever released by Sony to date.

The idea is that it will go head-to-head with Apple’s iPod touch, as it features WIFI and is compatible with most popular music and video formats. It will also sport a web browser and the Walkman is also said to be able to download music from the Amazon store, and you can probably expect some sort of Sony online store too. And just in case you still listen to terrestrial radio, the touchscreen walkman also has FM radio.

Sony Ericsson has officially launched the nice looking W705 Walkman phone today. The W705 will feature Clear Bass/Clear Stereo audio quality, DLNA-certified Wi-Fi connectivity, Shake control, SensMe music control, 2.4″ display, Bluetooth connectivity, 3.2 megapixel camera, Built-in accelerometer and Integrated FM radio. The device will come bundled with a 4GB memory card with each purchase.

I have no idea if this is a concept or some geek’s elaborate prank in order to get girls or something. It could be a modified cassette player, but somehow I doubt it. You would need a few AA batteries at least. All I know is that had the actual iPod and Walkman merged in the 80′s, this would be the result. I suppose it would download music off of itunes, and store it on it’s cassette hard drive. When that casette is full, insert another and begin again. Very bizarre, but a cool pic.

A new breed of Walkmans has hit Sony’s New Zealand website and they are colorful as a bag full of skittles in a Leprechauns pot o gold. The new models are the NWZ-E435, NWZ-E436, and NWZ-E438. They all feature a 2-inch QVGA LCD display, FM tuner, codec support for MP3, AAC, WMA, and Linear PCM files, and clock in a very small package of 8.5mm.

The devices will be available in 2GB, 4GB, or 8GB sizes, each model having various color options, the NWZ-E438 being the exception as it only comes in black. Supposedly the PMPs are compatible with both Windows Media Player and iTunes, with a drag and drop interface. Nothing on price yet or what country will see it first. Not even a release date, but expect them on the next month or two. We’ll let you know when we hear more.