Walkman to iPOD

Sony: 1979.....................................Apple Computer:2001

I remember one Indian CEO once lamenting why iPOD didn't come from Sony. Once I was debating with a Marketing professional about the defn of marketing. The most comprehensive defn we could arrive at or rather I learnt from him is " Marketing is the process of Need Identification". You can't create customer needs. Needs are always there, sometimes latent, sometimes obvious.
Walkman (Akio Morita) is the perfect example of that. But if music on the move was the basic customer need Morita was able to identify 20 years back, then why Sony failed to come up with iPOD?
Or is it the extension of technology been converted by a marketing genius Steve Jobs (as Kotler calls him) into iPOD to satisfy the same need??

a great case for learning for the marketers!!