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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: StanX Long who wrote (58618)	1/9/2002 11:35:41 PM
From: StanX Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

01/09 20:42 Toshiba Stops Producing CD-ROM Disk Drives as Demand Declines By Minoru Matsutani quote.bloomberg.com Tokyo, Jan. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Toshiba Corp., which is withdrawing from unprofitable businesses such as computer memory chips, has stopped making read-only compact disk drives after demand declined. Tokyo-based Toshiba stopped production of CD-ROM drives for personal computers at its Philippine plant in December, company spokeswoman Midori Suzuki said. The plant now produces notebook PCs and peripherals such as digital versatile disk drives. Demand for CD-ROM drives is shrinking because computers are increasingly featuring higher capacity optical disks for customers who want to watch moving images. Taiwanese and Korean rivals are also winning market share by selling cheaper products. ``We will focus on drives for high-end optical disks, such as rewritable ones and DVDs,'' Suzuki said. Toshiba's decision was reported earlier today in the Nihon Keizai newspaper. Toshiba sold about 1.1 million CD-ROM drives last year, Suzuki said. That's 1.1 percent of the global market of 98 million, which fell 18 percent from 120 million units in 2000, Suzuki said. In contrast, worldwide shipments of DVD drives will rise to 70 million units in 2003 from 47 million last year, according to Toshiba. DVDs store 4.7 gigabytes of data, or two hours of movies, seven times as much as the amount 650 megabyte CD-ROMs can hold.