Sony NEC Optiarc Becomes Wholly-Owned Subsidiary Of Sony

[Ian]

It's going to be interesting to see what happens to Optiarc's drives as NEC has had a big influence on their designs. Hopefully, this doesn't mean that we'll see more rebadged Lite-On's.

http://www.sonynec-optiarc.com/080911PR_E.pdf

Sony Corporation (hereafter Sony) and NEC Corporation (hereafter NEC) today announced that they have signed an agreement to transfer NEC's 45% stock in Sony NEC Optiarc Inc. to Sony.

Sony and NEC separated their optical disc drive businesses and combined each company's respective strengths in the Sony NEC Optiarc Inc. joint venture, established April 3, 2006, with the aim of achieving further business expansion.

As a result of this agreement, Sony will make Sony NEC Optiarc Inc. a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Sony group, and will seek to strengthen its interaction with Sony group's product and device businesses to further streamline decision-making processes, enhance management responsiveness and further reinforce its next-generation optical disc drive business.

NEC will continue to contribute to the advancement of Sony NEC Optiarc Inc.'s optical disc drive products through the LSI development being carried out at NEC Electronics Corporation.

[Dartman]

I agree totally with that, LiteOn in my opinion still makes some of the most mediocre at best drives out there. When they were only making cd burners they has some of the very best drives out as far as bang for buck and quality of burns.
Some of my favorite drves were made BY NEC when I was starting to get into dvd burning, and Pioneer even uses their chips as well...