Anyone who wants to learn more about the King to be in removable storage read on.
"The demand for read-write drives is very strong."
Declining cost for both drives and media, of course, constitute a the
major drivers in CD-RW adoption. Consumers now have to pay around $150 to
$200 for a very basic add-on CD-RW drive, according to various estimates,
while manufacturers are paying around $85 to $90 per drive incorporated
into PCs. More deluxe models running at faster speeds can go for $350 or more.
These prices are higher than the retail and wholesale costs for Zip
drives or garden variety CD drives, but gap is closing fast.
Concurrently, the speed of now slower CD-RW drives is increasing. By
2000, these trends will make CD-RW a more viable option as a standard
feature for most PCs.
"The sweet spot for [computer] manufacturers is a 4 x 4 x 24 for under
$100," said Mary Bourdon, an analyst at
<<http://www.dataquest.com>Gartner Group Dataquest. "You won't see it
this year, but you should see some interesting things next year…I would
expect to start seeing some more heat on the competition." (The "4 x 4 x
24" refers to the speeds at which the drive records, rewrites, and reads
data. Currently low-end drives record and rewrite at 2x and read at 24x.)
Some competition for the Zip, in fact, appears to already be occurring.
Sales of add-on Iomega drives--the kind you buy after you've already
bought a PC--have already leveled off, said Bourdon, attributing the drop
partially to CD-RW sales.
Six million external CD-RW drives shipped last year. In total, Iomega
shipped 9.5 million drives last year, according to Dataquest.
As for media prices, CDs are already winning, according to Ted Pine, an
analyst at <<http://www.infotechresearch.com>InfoTech Research. CD-R
disks, which allow a user to burn data or music onto a CD, but not erase
or re-record data, cost under $1 retail. Classic CD-RW disks, which let
users erase and re-record data in a similar fashion to cassette tapes or
floppy disks, sell for under $20 and should dip below $10 by year end.
Cost, however, is not the only factor in driving adoption, Pine said.
Another important consideration is the ubiquity of the CD-ROM standard.
CDR and CD-RW disks are largely compatible with standard CD-ROM drives,
which are included on nearly every computer and home stereo system.
Iomega disks can only be played back on their own drives.
"There is no other backup medium that can have that possibility," said
Pine, who predicted that the uptick in CD-RW sales could start later this
year. The complex user-interfaces for CD-RWs are also improving, he
added. Thirdly, Pine pointed out that some CD-RW drives coming out soon
will also run DVD-ROM disks, which further adds to the platform's
attractiveness.
Brian Smith, senior product specialist at Gateway, one of the more active
proponents of CD-RW, said the company has not seen CD-RW sales
cannibalize Zip sales. However, that could change over time as consumers
understand the cost savings in terms of the recording media. |
