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Technology Stocks : C-Cube -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Taro who wrote (38900)	2/11/1999 10:57:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50808

Acer has big plans for DVD(Acer is a C-Cube DVD Player customer)............................... asiansources.com Industry News Posted: Jan. 26, 1999 Local Taiwan DVD manufacturing to shake up market In a move that will take the island's technology manufacturing to a new level, a local research institute announced Taiwan will be ready to begin local DVD production by year's end, brewing optimistic speculations on lower prices and better technology. The move into full local DVD component and housing production is stepping out of an era of importing technology from Japan to fit local housing. Previously, Taiwan was unable to locally produce the internal drive, digital reader and circuitry chip of DVD players, and had to buy the components from Japan. This deprived local makers of any control over price and technological advancements. Yeh You-ching, general manager of Ritek Corp., maker of disc playing products, likened the situation to a market without a choice. "We were making products that did not consider the market or consumer demands," he said. "Now we can produce according to the market, rather than against it." "Japan and Korea have been the dominant DVD producers, controlling markets, prices and technology. Taiwan's challenge in this market will introduce a new playing field which should take prices down and product innovation to new heights," said Thales Lee, economic advisor at Vision Communications. The government-funded Industrial Technology Research Institute had been researching DVD production techniques and successfully created the internal drive and circuitry chip. Private sectors came through with the advancement in digital capability. ITRI research director Lin Ching-hua said the problem Taiwan now faces is cooperation in component manufacturing. Component sources among the island's manufacturers must be a reality, not just talk, he said. Taiwan makers must eventually create a network of DVD component manufacturing that will allow Taiwan to be competitive on the world market. "Having the technology is one thing, how they manage to use it in an efficient way to become a production leader is still in question," says Lee of Vision Communications. Computer giant Acer Inc. hopes to see the problem resolved through cooperation between component and software manufactures. "DVD production in Taiwan should take the same road as the computer industry — close networking between sectors to increase their competitiveness as a whole," said Acer Laboratories general manager Wu Chin-chi. Estimates expect Taiwan DVD players to hit the market by year's end and become a force on the world market by the year 2000. "We have already completed research on the DVD, which frees us to press ahead to the next level of technology, the HD-DVD," said ITRI's Lin. "We have the strength to set the pace of technological innovation."