DVD market to start booming in late 1998-Dataquest
TOKYO, Sept 11 (Reuter) - The market for digital video discs
(DVDs) will likely take off in late 1998, global market
researcher Dataquest said on Thursday.
"Next year will be the first big year of DVD," said Ralph
Rogers, a Dataquest analyst.
DVD products will do well despite a slow start, Dataquest
said.
DVD is a new recording medium with large data storage
capacity. Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd and
Toshiba Corp launched the world's first DVD players in
November 1996.
In video game machines, Dataquest said there is currently no
room for competitors other than the three existing players, Sony
Corp , Nintendo Co Ltd and Sega Enterprises
Ltd , with Sega's 32-bit machine, Saturn, likely to
remain a distant third among them.
Dataquest said the market for game software is expected to
continue its growth through 1997, but will likely slow down in
1998 or 1999.
As of the end of May, Sony affiliate Sony Computer
Entertainment Inc had shipped a total of 16 million units of its
PlayStation video game machines globally.
The company plans to sell 18 million units in the current
business year to March 31, 1998. The machine was first put on
the Japanese market in December 1994.
Sony rival Nintendo introduced a 64-bit game machine,
Nintendo 64, which is faster and smarter than 32-bit machines,
last June.
As of the end of March 1997, it had sold 2.04 million
machines in Japan and an additional 4.08 million overseas.
The company aims to sell 12 million units of the Nintendo 64
machines globally in fiscal 1997/98, ending in March.
Sega, meanwhile, plans to sell 1.9 million Saturns globally
in the year to March 1998. As of the end of March, the company
said it had sold a total of 7.56 million Saturns worldwide. --
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