In Japan, home to four of the five top electronics companies by sales, advance orders made Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod mini the top-selling portable player three weeks before its July 24 release. It still is.
Tokyo-based Sony Corp.'s embarrassment at Apple's hands is another setback for the company that in 1979 invented the world's first portable music player, the Walkman. Sony's profit from consumer electronics has fallen in five of the past six years as Sharp Corp. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. grabbed the digital initiative with flat-screen televisions and DVD players.
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