BenQ aims to be world's third largest optical drive maker

September 2, 2004

GristyMcFisty used our news submit to tell us
about this article he saw over at
DigiTimes. BenQ, with their Philips
BenQ Digital Storage joint venture, want to become the number three
world supplier of optical drives. Right now, they are producing some 100,000
slim drives per month. By the end of this year they hope to ship one
million drives. They intend to compete more aggressively for OEM orders for
slim-type optical drives in the coming months.

BenQ expects to increase its production of notebook-use slim optical disc drives by next year and become the world's third largest producer of optical drives, according to vice president William Wang for the company's Imaging Network Business Group.

BenQ intends to compete more aggressively for OEM orders for slim-type optical drives, Wang pointed out. BenQ also produces own brand half-height (H/H) optical drives for channel sales and OEM manufactures drives for Dell and Hewlett Packard (HP). According to Japan-based Techno Systems Research (TSR), BenQ ranked fourth globally in the first half of this year in H/H optical drive production. Hitachi-LG Data Storage (HLDS), Lite-On IT and Toshiba-Samsung Storage Technology (TSST) were the top three ranking companies.

Not only that, BenQ has aproximately
20 members of it's staff working with Philips on next generation, Blue
laser technology.

Source: DigiTimes