Japanese electronic maker Pioneer
has forecasted it will make a net loss of 24 billion Yen this fiscal year and
has therefore announced a restructuring plan. As a part of this plan it will
stop making low-end DVD recorders and according to Reuters buy OEM units from Funai Electric. When it
comes to PC drives Pioneer will focus on slim notebook drives and Blu-ray Disc
drives:
In the DVD recorder
business, prices of low-end products sold in Europe and the
U.S. have
been sharply falling. Therefore, we have already discontinued developing
such low-end products on our own, and are concentrating our development
resources on products featuring advanced technologies. In terms of LSIs
and software development, we will aggressively promote tie-ups with other
companies, introducing products quickly to the market, and push down
development costs. Production of low-end DVD recorders and VCR-combo DVD
recorders will be shifted to subcontractors, to improve
profitability.
As for recordable DVD
drives for personal computers (PCs), we will focus on slim drives for
notebook PCs to deliver high added value. We are shifting core development
to drives for Blu-ray Discs, whose sales are expected to grow dramatically
from here onward.
We
will continue to strengthen sales of DVD recorder drive units to
non-Pioneer group companies. In the current fiscal year, we expect to
supply 3 million such drive units, which account for roughly 20% of the
worldwide recorder market. This volume includes the 1 million drive units
supplied for our in-house use. We plan to double this figure to 6 million
units next fiscal year, with the aim of capturing 30% of the world market.
We have also been developing in new areas. This fiscal year, we developed
a DVD recorder unit exclusively using 8 cm DVDs and began supplying it for
use in DVD camcorders. We will expand market of the units for other use as
well. |
The press release with Pioneer's
complete restructuring plans is available here (PDF).
Source: Pioneer Japan
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By
shimman,
Saturday 10 December 2005 07:51
holographic storage system has been untested in the market, so have bd & hd-dvd
sony/panasonic claim that bd will be more reliable than dvd with their "special protective coating technology", but i don't buy it. the recording layer is only 0.10mm away from the surface. one scratch can destroy the disk. i think this is why professional bd disks are in the cartridges
sony's forward thinking is now limited to only 250gB bd disk using 4 layers with dual lanz pickup that philips developed (at best 2010) while holographic disk begins with 300gB to 1.0gB (around 2008) & 1.6tB (around 2010)
it seems that after dvd, i am not sure how long bd will hold as ms and others will try to deliver contents over the internet after the death of dvd
By
shimman,
Saturday 10 December 2005 19:02
bd itself is not backward compatable; bd drive makers are making it compatable with dvd/cd with separate pickups
bd chipset is/will be supporting cd/dvd codings, but that doesn't mean bd is a direct sucessor of cd/dvd.
for the compatability & cost, bd gave up the cartridge which will potentially a big problem down the road
By
Kenshin,
Monday 12 December 2005 04:40
Maybe you are confused on this matter.
Blu-ray has been on the market at least since 2003. That's nearly 3 years ago. It has been on the market longer than dual-layer DVD recordable media.
As for backward compatibility, a BD or HD-DVD drive can accept CD and DVD. That's what we call backward compatibility.
Cartridge for Blu-ray disks is an entirely another issue. It's like a sub-specification part of Blu-ray.
Happy Birthday to you 
