Here's an interesting bit of news. According to DigiTimes, Panasonic expects
blue-laser optical disc drives to be built into 10% of desktop and notebook PCs by 2008. This increase adoption is primarily due to the
drop in price of Blu-ray Disc writers and the willingness of large PC vendors to adopt blue-laser burners and drives.
The
adoption of blue-laser optical disc drives (ODDs), Blu-ray Disc (BD) and/or HD DVD, built into desktop and notebook PCs will increase
from less than 1% of all PCs in 2007 to 10% in 2008, according to general manager Masayuki Kozuka for the Storage Device Business
Strategy Office of Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic).
In the case of BD burners, OEM price levels have dropped from
US$1,000 in 2006 to US$800 in 2007 and may further fall to US$500 in 2008 mainly because of increasing yields and production capacity of
BD pick-up heads and chipsets, Kozuka pointed out. This has increased the willingness of international PC vendors, including
Hewlett-Packard (HP), Dell, Acer and Asustek Computer, to adopt blue-laser burners or drives, Kozuka indicated.
If
you'd like to read more, head on over to DigiTimes.
