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To: Tim McCormick who wrote (34313)	7/15/1998 5:54:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

Dataquest is down to 4.6M units of DVD-ROM this year............... newmedia.com (Published in NewMedia August 1998 Contents) THE FRONTLINE: BY THE NUMBERS -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Making the Move to DVD By Tim Bajarin Despite all the controversy swirling around the introduction of DVD, such as conflicting standards, copy-protection schemes, Divx, and so on, DVD is here to stay. While it may not have lived up to its initial hype, the introduction of DVD has been a success. To date, about 400,000 DVD video players have been sold worldwide, and CEMA (the Consumer Electronics Manufacturing Association) predicts that 1 million will be sold in 1998. It's time to invest in DVD content. While DVD-V movies and players are taking hold, DVD-ROM is where the action is. DVD expands the multimedia publisher's canvas to as much as 18GB and can hold more than four hours of video content. In fact, DVD will revolutionize a key element of the communication process by turning a PC into a significant platform for reading and interacting with all types of digital media. Easy access to gigs of storage should launch an extension of the desktop publishing revolution that encompasses video, animation, 3D images, and sound, in addition to text and graphics. Over time, DVD drives (of various forms) will also replace CD drives in PCs. The big question is when? While experts disagree on the precise date, they do agree that it will be soon. The vendors are naturally the most bullish in their predictions. Philips says 25 million DVD-ROM drives will be on the market worldwide by 2000. Toshiba predicts that there will be 120 million DVD-ROM drives in the market by the end of 2000. Worldwide DVD-ROM Drive Shipment Forecast '98 4,600 '99 15,500 '00 41,150 '01 94,498 Source: Dataquest (February 1998) These companies believe that by the end of 1999 vendors will no longer be making CD-ROM drives. Pioneer forecasts 11 million DVD-video players will be sold by 2000 and that 54 million DVD-ROM drives will be sold worldwide in 2000. We are still seeing standards fights in the rewritable DVD area, but one dominant format should emerge in the next year or so. PCs With DVD Drives (millions) '97 .2 '98 2.4 '99 10.6 '00 23.7 '01 39.7 '02 53.3 Source: Forrester Research (Sept. 1997) For a more objective view, let's turn to the market researchers. The Yankee Group predicts 19 million DVD-PCs by 2001. Forrester believes that there will be a U.S. base of 53 million DVD-equipped PCs by 2000. Dataquest says that there will be 33 million DVD players shipped by 2000. And IDC thinks 70 million DVD-ROM drives will be sold in 2000 and 118 million in 2001. While these numbers are all over the map, they do confirm one key fact: DVD is poised to overtake CD-ROM and become the distribution medium for software and multimedia content within the next three years. If anything, Forrester's prediction that 53 million PCs will be equipped with DVD-ROM drives by 2000 is low. In 1998, about 90 million PCs will be sold worldwide. Virtually all of these will have CD-ROM drives in them. By mid 1999, the switch from CD-ROMs to DVD-ROMs will be in full swing, and starting in 2000, every PC that goes out the door should have a DVD-ROM drive inside. If we keep selling PCs at rates similar to those of today, we will have closer to 150 million DVD PCs by 2001. More importantly, we are getting closer to the time when multimedia publishers can begin expanding their content horizons to reflect this new opportunity.