Toshiba Says Philips' DVD Delay Costly
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Toshiba Says Philips' DVD Delay Costly
03:10 p.m Dec 08, 1997 Eastern
PARIS (Reuters) - Japanese digital video disc (DVD) maker Toshiba said on Monday a manufacturing delay by Dutch Philips had cost it four billion francs in potential European DVD sales.
Koji Hase, director general of Toshiba's digital video disc division, told French daily Les Echos that Philips had failed to deliver encoding machines needed in time for Christmas.
''Philips was supposed to provide its encoders in August to be ready for Christmas sales,'' he told the paper in an interview.
''If you estimate that we could have sold about 400,000 machines in Europe in 1997 at 5,000 francs each, you can estimate that we have already lost, roughly speaking, two billion francs of revenue on the hardware and about as much on the software.
''Overall, it's an opportunity of four billion francs which we are missing because of this delay,'' he said.
The paper said Philips denies blame for the delay in the launch of DVD in Europe, pointing the finger instead at the studios producing the content.
Hase said the problem was in delivering equipment to the agreed MPEG2 audio standard for Europe. Dolby AC3 is the standard in use in the United States and Japan.
He said Philips had only delivered prototypes, not ready for mass production, and that he was going to ask Hollywood studios to start producing titles in AC3.
On Friday, Toshiba said it expects demand for DVD players in circulation to reach 1.25 million to 1.5 million units in the global market in 1997/98. A DVD looks like a compact disc (CD) but stores far more information, allowing it to hold feature-length movies as well as music and other information. |
