Sony, NEC to Merge Optical Drive Businesses

[Deepak]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20051117/tc_pcworld/123586

The two companies hope to launch the new venture on April 1, 2006, which is the first day of the new financial year in Japan. Sony will hold a 55 percent stake in the as-yet-unnamed company and NEC will hold the remaining 45 percent stake, according to the terms of a memorandum of understanding signed by the companies.


The new joint venture will work on planning, design, manufacturing, and marketing of optical-disc drives for products such as personal computers and DVD players, they said in a statement. In the next-generation optical disc market the company will manufacture drives for both the HD-DVD format, of which NEC is a major backer, and Blu-ray Disc, of which Sony is a leading supporter, both companies said.


The merger plans bring together NEC's optical-disc large scale integrated circuit (LSI) chip technology with Sony's optical pick-up technology. Both companies are already major manufacturers of optical-disc drives.

 

[PC-Engine]

This is not a merger. It's a joint venture.

 

[Arun]

Technically, it's neither. A merger generally implies the merging of the two entire companies, while a joint venture generally implies that new facilities, technologies and products are created with no prior product fondation (and, if there are products "at joint venture creation time", then they tend not to correspond 1:1 to the original companies' products at all). In this specific case, current products are kept under separate brands [for the time being at least], but the factories etc. are kept and will be shared, which does not make it a "pure" joint venture imo.

I'm unaware of the most precise term for such a financial operation, but a merger between businesses and not corporations feels like the most correct one to me, which is what the title suggests. As such, complaining about it is unappropriate imo.

As for implications of this "merger": IMO, it's yet some more great news for Blu-Ray. NEC currently is a dominant player in that industry when you're talking about relatively low-end drives. Sony's focus is more medium/high-end in that business historically. Combined marketshare is about 20% according to the article. If they use this properly, their marketshare could be very, very high in the HD era. IMO at least.


Uttar

 

[PC-Engine]

Which is fine and dandy but SONY doesn't make their own drives. They outsource to LiteON. In other words they just rebadge LiteOn drives.

The article is flawed.

This JV has little effect on Blu-ray or HD DVD contrary to what most people like to believe.

Oh btw NEC holds a 25% marketshare of DVD burners worldwide and I see this move as SONY ditching LiteON and a hint at NEC being the new OEM for SONY.

 

[Guden Oden]

This is great news. NEC makes terrific optical drives, and from what I've read on the web, Sony's aren't too bad either. Their latest got a great review at anandtech for example. I just wish NEC would launch a drive that supports DVD-RAM...

 

[Rur0ni]

This is great news. NEC makes terrific optical drives, and from what I've read on the web, Sony's aren't too bad either. Their latest got a great review at anandtech for example. I just wish NEC would launch a drive that supports DVD-RAM...

Dear sir,

http://cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Specific.aspx?ArticleId=15548

NEC ND-4551A

5x DVD-RAM Read/Write.

 

[Guden Oden]

OOOO! Awesome. Gotta spend some cash on that beaut then! Thanks man!