This is really good news BillyG!! For a couple reasons.
techweb.com
March 30, 1998, TechWeb News
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Taiwan DVDs stress supply -- Rollout may cause key component shortages
By Sandy Chen
Taipei, Taiwan- After knocking a big dent into the CD-ROM drive market, Taiwan manufacturers are making an aggressive move into the exploding DVD business, further straining component supply.
Acer Inc., Acer Peripherals Inc., Asustek Computer Inc., Lite-On Technology Inc., Tatung Co., and other Taiwan companies will roll out DVD systems as early as the third quarter of this year. Local companieswill sell these DVD players under their own logos, as well as to foreign OEMs.
Taiwan's entry into the DVD business will step up the competitive pressure on their rivals in Japan and South Korea and ultimately push down product prices at a rapid rate, analysts said.
But sourcing problems may offset market gains. Aside from the continuing standards battles in the DVD market, Taiwan companies must purchase nearly all of their key components from foreign sources, mainly in Japan and Europe.
That means Taiwan manufacturers could have difficulty obtaining a sufficient supply of key DVD components, according to Alan Liu, an analyst at the government-sponsored Market Intelligence Center (MIC), in Taipei. "Japan's capacity is limited for DVD components," he said.
In addition, licensing fees will increase costs.
Local companies had to negotiate similar hurdles when they entered the CD-ROM drive arena in the mid-1990s. Still, the MIC now ranks Taiwan second behind Japan in
total worldwide market share in CD-ROM drives, tracking an increase from 0% to 23% between 1994 and 1997.
As with CD-ROM drives, local companies are now going after DVD business. Last week, for example, Taiwan's Tatung Co. selected C-Cube Microsystems Inc.'s DVD decoder chip for a new line of DVD products that the Taipei company will roll out in the third quarter.
Taipei-based Acer, the island's largest PC maker, plans to roll out its first DVD-ROM line of systems in the third quarter. Market watchers say Acer's product, called the DVD-9432, will be sold as a stand-alone DVD player as well as an internal storage subsystem for PCs
A PC/CE win at the same time?. WIll it be in Acer brand PC's?????
Hopefully the DVD-9432 will have other's names on it and hopefully when Acer builds PC's under contract they'll use this product also.
To get an idea of the scope of their OEM activity read
http:// www.techweb.com/se/directlink.cgi?EBN19980511S0089
Fast-food' approach hits the spot at Acer -- Assembly strategy paying off as Taiwan's CEM business explodes
By Mark Lapedus And Sandy Chen
In the early 1990s, Stan Shih adopted a radical approach to PC manufacturing for the company he heads: Acer Inc., Taiwan's largest computer maker.
Shih, the Taipei-based company's chairman and chief executive, deployed what he called a "fast-food" PC assembly strategy as a means of reducing the cost and delivery time of PCs made for itself and for its OEM customers.
Under a complex procedure, Acer ships printed-circuit boards from Asia by air to assembly sites worldwide. Cases, monitors, and other items are shipped by sea. Processors, DRAMs, and disk drives are sourced locally. A full-blown PC is assembled at sites in Taiwan in a matter of days.
What was once viewed as a gamble has become a successful model.
Acer's global manufacturing strategy has won the company PC contracts from large OEMs, including Fujitsu Ltd., IBM Corp., and, most recently, Siemens Nixdorf.
Consequently, Acer has watched its OEM-based contract manufacturing revenue soar from practically zero in the late 1980s to a projected $3.78 billion, or 60% of sales, this year................... |
