Our recent posts about Plextor (here and here) have shocked many people in the community. But what exactly is going on? An official confirmed statement from Shinano Kenshi Co., Ltd., the parent company of Plextor, announced today a plan to perform corporate reorganization and reduce Plextor's optical drive business operations, corresponding to the deterioration of its business environment.
Plextor entered into the optical disk drive market in early '90s and recorded highest revenue by introduction of 12x CD-R drive in 2000. However, its recent sales has been slow because of the increased competition from Taiwanese and Korean manufacturers.
"Although Plextor's optical drive operations will be reduced, our business itself will still continue," says Motoaki Kaneko, the president of Shinano Kenshi. "We do have a plan to release consumer drives while our engineering team will be engaged more in the development for business use equipment."
The company also says that there will be no change in the operations for Plextor-branded industrial equipment and DAISY-based audio recorder/reproducer for visually handicapped people.
