• Agence France Presse, Thursday, September 2, 2010 1:39 PM

Sony might be struggling stateside, but it just scored a major victory in its hometown. In Japan, Agence France Presse is reporting that the Sony Walkman portable music player outsold the iPod in monthly sales for the first time since the iPod debuted in 2001.

Sony's share of the Japanese market for portable music players stood at 47.8% last month, ahead of Apple, which had 44%, according to Tokyo-based marketing research company BCN. As BCN analyst Eiji Mori tells AFP, the result demonstrated "consumers' reluctance to buy iPods ahead of the launch of a new iPod range in the United States." Yesterday, Apple debuted its latest line iPods, along with a music-centered social network for its iTunes music store.

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