Taiwan enters the DVD+RW slimline market

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Posted on Thursday 20th of November, 2003 at 10:41 by DiViDeZeRo
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Lite-On IT, Taiwan’s largest manufacturer of optical disk drives and one of the world’s top three makers of half height drives, started production of 4x DVD+RW drives in small volumes for Taiwanese notebook PC makers this month.

There are two articles online at Digitimes, that tell us about the production of slimline 4x DVD+RW drives. It seems to me that prices will drop now that Taiwan has started the production of these drives, especially since LiteOn has already proven inself as a worthy player in the optical storage world.

"Currently, the bulk of the world’s contract orders for slim-type 4x DVD+RW drives are handled by Japanese and South Korean makers as Taiwanese companies lag by about one or two quarters, the sources said.

Japanese and South Korean makers, including Sony, Toshiba, Ricoh, Pioneer, Matsushita-Kotobuki Electronics (MKE) and Hitachi-LG Data Storage (HLDS), all began volume production of slim-type drives in or before the third quarter of this year.

With the exception of Quanta Storage, most Taiwanese makers like BenQ, Lite-On IT and AOpen have only just started volume production of similar models, the sources said.

With expertise drawn from production of slim-type combo drives over the past one or two years, Taiwanese makers will be able to change the landscape of the world’s slim-type DVD drive market with large quantities at competitive prices, said the sources.

However, the sources said that demand is expected to increase significantly in 2004 as more and more notebooks are shipped with slim-type drives.

Contract manufacturing prices for the slim-type DVD+RW drives quoted by Taiwanese companies are currently around US$170-180, according to the sources.

Lite-On IT estimates its monthly shipment of slim combo models will exceed 200,000 units this quarter, double the figure recorded in the first half of this year. Including 4x slim DVD+RW drives, the company expects to sell more than one million slim-type drives this year..

In addition, Lite-On IT will begin volume production of 4x slim DVD Dual drives in the first quarter of 2004. The company aims to deliver four million slim-type burners next year, with the proportion of combo drives decreasing to 70% and that of 4x DVD+RW and DVD Dual drives increasing to 30%."

It seems that the demand for slimline DVD+RW drives will increase, where the amount of produced drives seems to be on the rise as well. If the demand will be bigger then production can handle, prices will go up. But I suspect prices will drop, now that the taiwanese manufacturers have entered the market, and will be able to cope with the demand. This article was compiled by two newsposts on Digitimes.

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