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News

21 November 2007

 

Blue-laser drives to be in 10% of PCs in 2008

The adoption of Blu-ray Disc (BD) and/or HD DVD blue-laser optical disc drives (ODDs) in desktop and notebook PCs will increase from less than 1% of all PCs in 2007 to 10% in 2008, reckons Masayuki Kozuka, general manager for the Storage Device Business Strategy Office of Japan’s Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic), reports Digitimes.com.

In the case of BD burners, OEM price levels have dropped from $1000 in 2006 to $800 in 2007 and may fall further to $500 in 2008, mainly because of increasing yields and production capacity of BD pick-up heads and chipsets, Kozuka comments. This has increased the willingness of international PC vendors, including Hewlett-Packard (HP), Dell, Acer and Asustek Computer, to adopt blue-laser burners or drives.

Japan is the market promoting blue-laser consumer electronics the most, Kozuka notes. BD or HD DVD players as a percentage of all disc players/recorders sold in Japan has risen from 14.8% in 2006 to 20% in 2007 and is expected to grow to 50% in 2008.

See related items:

Blue-laser-based optical disk drives to take 20–30% of ODD sales in 2010

Sharp sets July date to begin mass producing blue-violet lasers using a 3.3mm diameter CAN package

Nichia to start mass producing 250mW blue-violet laser next January

Sony boosts blue-violet laser capacity to 1.7 million per month

Search: Blu-ray Disc HD DVD blue-laser

Visit: www.digitimes.com/systems/a20071121PD211.html