It looks like Sony will finally release a Walkman with the potential to rival the Apple iPod. While it faces steep opposition, there seems to be a few unique features that set this apart.

Before the iPod, Sony was the king of portable music with its Walkman and Discman products. But ever since, Apple has had a stranglehold on the market. Thankfully Sony has stuck around in this category and just unveiled a very promising new device, the Walkman Z1000 Series.

The Sony Wlakman Z1000 features a 4.3-inch multi-touch LCD, integrated S-Master MX digital amplifier and runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system. It also has built-in Wi-Fi, DLNA, micro HDMI and Bluetooth connectivity.

It also looks to come with a pretty good pair of Sony headphones in the box, is iTunes friendly and will have Music Unlimited pre-installed.

No word on local release date or pricing yet. But it will be available in the US market in Spring, starting at $249 for the 16GB variation.