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Prices for Blu-ray drives not falling

by on09 April 2008

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Prices to stay the same or rise a little


News from Taiwan concerning the pricing of Blu-ray drives is now confirming our predictions that we made in January.

Due to a variety of factors, the price of Blu-ray drives in both computer and standalone applications is going to either rise a little or stay the same through the end of the year. The suggestion by the Blu-ray hardware manufacturers that the prices of the drives would go down further this year do not seem to be supported by the current facts.

OEM PC manufacturers expected the cost of the BD drives to fall by between 7% to 10% a quarter, with the prices expected to level out at a project cost to be about 30% less than the going rate for a Blu-ray drive; today this isn’t even close to a possible reality. OEMs expected drive prices to fall from their current level of about $100 to somewhere around $70 by the fourth quarter of this year.

The main cause for the lack of price movement on the Blu-ray drives seems to be centered around the fact that the cost of the pick-up heads for the BD drives, as well as increased costs for other components, have eaten into any potential savings. It has been suggested that a possible price increase could be on the immediate horizon, as a matter of fact. The price increase is projected to possibly be as much as 5% to 10% until the immediate supply loosens up some.

Currently, the supply of pickup-heads for Blu-ray drives has been tight, which has led to the supply of Blu-ray drives being tight. The tight availability of Blu-ray drives is expected to continue, which could also lead to difficulty for the manufacturers of standalone units to be able to hit their target for a sub-$200 Blu-ray standalone player by the 2008 holiday season.

With the ongoing problems with the replication of Blu-ray discs and the problem of higher than expected costs plaguing the Blu-ray drives, one just has to wonder aloud if Toshiba had it right all along with its HD DVD format.

Read more here.

Last modified on 09 April 2008
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