Taiwanese makers to phase out combo drives due to growing demand for DVD burners

December 24, 2003

Digitimes reports that many Taiwanese optical storage drive manufacturers
are phasing out combo drives (Write CD-R, CD-RW and read CD and
DVD) because the growing demand of DVD recorders. The OEM price level
of combo drives has dropped from USD 70-80 per unit in the first quarter of this
year to USD 40-45 currently. The OEM prices of DVD burners have slipped from USD
170-180 to about USD 100 in the same period.

As the price difference has fallen from USD 100 to USD 55-60, global
demand for DVD burners has grown faster than for combo drives. Many Taiwanese
makers are willing to allocate more capacity to DVD burners by reducing combo
drive output, but not all of them:

However,
a few other makers have different views. Lite-On IT, Taiwan's largest
maker of optical disc drives, continues to ship a high monthly level of
300,000-400,000 combo drives to retail channels in the US and Europe as
well as international PC suppliers. In the China market, combo drives will
remain the mainstream for a while because the price level of DVD burners
is up to 1.5 times that of combo drives, according to BenQ, another
Taiwanese
maker.