Sony
and NEC have today announced that they plan to establish an ODD
(Optical Disc
Drive) joint venture company. This is a quite
surprising announcement as Sony is one of the main companies behind the Blu-ray
Disc format and NEC is one of the main companies behind the competing HD DVD
format. The planned joint venture company will however focus on current DVD and
CD formats initially:
Sony will hold a 55%
stake in the new company while NEC's stake will be 45%. Sony and NEC will
make preparations to transfer their respective optical disc drive
operations to the Joint Venture, targeting a business start on April 1,
2006. The Joint Venture will focus on the planning, design, manufacturing
and marketing to manufacturers of optical disc drives (DVD and CD drives)
for integration into products such as PCs. The company will operate on a
global basis.
The new company will
pool the best in optical disc drive technology (e.g. NEC's strengths in
LSIs and Sony's expertise in optical pickups) to deliver high quality and
reliable products to consumer electronics and PC makers on a timely basis.
Sony's President and
Electronics CEO, Ryoji Chubachi commented:
Optical disc drives are
key components for a broad range of devices and we are strategically
focusing our development resources in this sector. By teaming with NEC
which has excellent technology in areas such as DVD drives, I believe we
can work effectively to enhance our product lineup and quality on a global
scale.
NEC's President Akinobu
Kanasugi, commented:
The market for high
value-added drives to be integrated into PCs and consumer electronics
products is rapidly expanding. I believe we have made the best choice in
partnering with Sony with whom we can build a total value chain covering
procurement of key components, production and marketing. This will allow
us to realize the aim of becoming the top vendor in this
sector. |
The complete press release is
available here. The announcement is probably bad news to Lite-On which
has made most of Sony's recent drives. It also means that Lite-On
will get another strong joint venture company as competitor where it
already has Hitachi-LG, Philips-BenQ and
Toshiba-Samsung.
Source: NEC Japan
