Plextor Announces Corporate Reorganization

[Ian]

Anyone else a bit suprised by this? It sounds like Plextor really isn't changing, but it makes you wonder how well they're doing in the US market.

http://www.plextor.com/english/news/pre ... LC_pr.html

Plextor® Corp., a leading developer and manufacturer of high-performance digital media equipment, today announced that the corporate identity of Plextor Corporation will cease to exist effective August 31, 2006. On September 1, 2006, a new corporate identity will be created – Plextor LLC, a partner and merged entity of Shinano Kenshi Corporation (SKC-U.S.). SKC is one of the world’s largest electronic motor manufacturers.

Plextor LLC will continue to operate under its current structure and business strategies, and the company will remain located in Fremont, California. In essence, Plextor will remain fully autonomous and separate from SKCs Los Angeles-based organization.

“Through the merger with SKC, Plextor gains a strong and stable financial partner, a potential investor, and a partner company with broad ties and access to various product applications and markets,” said Toru Nakazawa, President, Plextor LLC.

“For SKC, the formation of Plextor LLC opens up new business and commercial opportunities, including the ability to achieve greater synergy with Plextor LLC’s organization in the future,” said Rex Bergsma, President, Shinano Kenshi Corporation.

For those not aware, Shinano Kenshi is Plextor's parent company in Japan. From what I can gather, they've simply merged Plextor's and Shinano Kenshi's US divisions.

[LoneWolf]

So, when will we see Plextor fishing reels?

Seriously though, I think Plextor was always a niche company --the Mercedes Benz SLK of optical drives. So when they started, they were SCSI-only, which was okay, because that was what you bought at the high end. Eventually they went IDE, but that was okay, as SCSI was going away even in enthusiast desktops, and the drives were still Plextor-made.

Now though, you can't even be sure you're buying a Plextor-made drive when you buy their product anymore. Plextor has attempted to capitalize on a high-end brandname without delivering high-end product, but still with high-end prices. Considering that other DVD burners run around $40-50 these days, I could understand if Plextor made the best (and made it themselves) and charged $80-100; most of us in geekland would pay top dollar if we knew the product was the best there was. But it just isn't that way anymore. They don't have the best write compatibility of everyone. They don't have the best firmware support. But they're charging like they do.

I remember having Plextor's 40Plex UW-SCSI drive in my system (still have it on a shelf) and I have a 40Plex Ultra/Plexwriter 12x in my wife's system, so it makes me kind of sad. But nowdays I can get equal-to-better NEC drives for less (at least until the Sony/NEC merger goes through) or other brands.

[Ian]

Good points LoneWolf. It will be interesting to see what happens with their Blu-ray drive. If it truly its based on the Panasonic SW-5582, its going to be hard to justify spending an extra $100-$200 just for the Plextor name.

What do you guys think about Plextor's non-ODD products, like their SAN drives and video capture devices?

[LoneWolf]

Good points LoneWolf. It will be interesting to see what happens with their Blu-ray drive. If it truly its based on the Panasonic SW-5582, its going to be hard to justify spending an extra $100-$200 just for the Plextor name.

What do you guys think about Plextor's non-ODD products, like their SAN drives and video capture devices?

I know nothing of their SAN stuff; I've heard really good things about their ConvertX video device. If I didn't have a high-end computer to do the encoding for me at home, I'd consider it (currently I just use an old ATI TV Wonder PCI for taking in analog video). That reminds me, I have to check on the Mac-version of that device...we need some more analog-to-1394 video converters here at work.

EDIT: Just checked, they're USB 2.0 only. I'd rather have FireWire, so so much for that.