CD-ROM is out, DVD-ROM is in.......
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From the September 29, 1997 Issue of Electronic News
In-Stat In-Sights
CD-ROM Speeds Approaching Limit
By Michelle Abraham
In-Stat Industry Analyst, Computer Market Services
After a turbulent 1996, the CD-ROM drive market has been much calmer this year. The 16x drives that were announced at Fall Comdex were available in PCs in the first quarter of 1997. They have now been overtaken by 24x drives for the title of the speediest on the market. In-Stat expects the next round of high-speed 32x drives to be introduced in November at this year's Fall Comdex show. Will drive speed move beyond 32x? Though drive controllers have been announced for speeds as high as 50x, not all manufacturers are likely to migrate toward the higher speeds. With DVD-ROM drives already appearing in high-end PCs from most major PC vendors, a question mark hovers over continued research dollars being spent on increasing CD-ROM drive speeds further.
Manufacturers currently shipping DVD-ROM drives include Hitachi, Matsushita, Pioneer, Sony and Toshiba. Hitachi and Toshiba have even introduced 2x DVD-ROM drives. DVD-ROM drives have been available for less than a year and the speed race has already begun. However, 4x will not appear any time soon, since there are technical challenges to overcome. Matsushita and Toshiba are also shipping slim DVD-ROM drives for notebook PCs.
Though DVD-ROM drives were first introduced late last year in Japan, copyright protection issues and then delays in CSS decryption licenses caused a wait for DVD-ROM drives in the U.S. The first drives were shipped in multimedia upgrade kits this spring. In June, PC vendors Micron Electronics and Gateway 2000 announced that desktop PCs were immediately available with DVD-ROM drives. Many other PC vendors have followed suit in their fall line. IBM and Packard Bell NEC are shipping DVD desktop PCs, while Compaq Computer and Hewlett-Packard have announced their intentions to do so. IBM and Panasonic have taken advantage of the new slim DVD-ROM drives to be the first to offer notebook PCs with DVD.
The main impetus for the inclusion of DVD-ROM drives in high-end PCs has been the decline in DVD-ROM drive prices. At the urging of the PC vendors, DVD-ROM drive manufacturers have lowered drive prices to under $200, so PC vendors have found it advantageous to include DVD as a differentiating factor on their high-end models. PC vendors decided not to wait for the release of Windows 98, which includes DVD support, since it will not be available until the second quarter of 1998. The decrease in DVD-ROM drive prices has pushed CD-ROM drive prices down even further so that even the newly introduced 24x drives are selling for just over $100.
Though several members of the DVD Forum are in disagreement with the DVD-RAM standard 1.0, Hitachi and Matsushita are shipping samples of their DVD-RAM drives. Both companies, along with Toshiba, plan to ship 2.6GB DVD-RAM drives in volume quantities late this year or early in 1998. Initially priced at approximately $800, DVD-RAM drives will not be a mainstream PC peripheral in 1998, In-Stat believes. Also, the threat of competing standards will make PC vendors leery of incorporating DVD-RAM drives into their PCs even when the price declines. Once there is a standard and the drives cost less than $200, In-Stat expects that DVD-RAM drives will replace CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives as well as floppy drives, high-capacity floppy drives and tape drives.
In 1997, In-Stat expects worldwide CD-ROM drive unit shipments to increase 24 percent over 1996 unit shipments. DVD-ROM drive shipments will be over 1 million units this year, but it is still a small percentage of the overall optical drive market. However in 1999, DVD drive shipments will be about equal to those of CD-ROM drives. DVD-RAM drives will make inroads into the DVD-ROM drive market in 2000. By 2001, In-Stat is anticipating that DVD-RAM drives will account for more than one-third of all DVD drives shipped worldwide. By that time, we'll be looking to new optical drive technology beyond DVD.
For more information, visit the In-Stat Web site at instat.com. |
