Report Says Optical Disks Market Experiencing Major Change

Welcome Guest. | Log In| Register | Membership Benefits

April 29, 2004 (9:06 AM EDT)

Report Says Optical Disks Market Experiencing Major Change

The optical disk market is going through a period of change marked on the one hand by a standardization and commoditization of older CD and DVD models and on the other hand by a lack of standards for advanced blue-ray optical disks, says a market research report.

The report from the firm Research and Markets says that the Blue-Ray product rollout is underway, and the competing advanced optical disk (AOD) specification is entering a "crucial stage of standardization effort." Blue-ray disc technology is supported by a group of manufacturers led by Sony and Matsushita in Japan and by Dell and Hewlett Packard in the U. S. Toshiba and NEC are leading the AOD effort. Capacities generally are more than 25-Gbytes for both drive types with some reaching 50-Gbytes.

Research and Markets said that feature differentiation has been important for the optical disk market and is driven by a combination of video editing and DVD recording applications, which are particularly important in the current improvement cycle.

"Both cutting edge type and commodity type optical disk devices products are making waves in today's market," the firm stated. "CD-R/RW, Combo, DVD-ROM, are sold in particular markets for specific applications, and have already established strong positions."