Tokyo, January 19, 2004---SANYO Electric Company Ltd., plans to widely raise production of DVD recordable optical pickups, a key device for the expanding DVD recordable drive market.
In optical disk drives used for PC peripherals there is a shift from conventional CD-ROM's to CD-R/RW, DVD-ROM and DVD-R/RW a change from read only to recordable types. In the midst of this shift forecasts are for strong growth in DVD recordable drives. Also in the AV market an increase in demand from conventional VCR's to DVD and HDD recorders is jump starting the market for DVD recordable drives. Total market figures for DVD recordable drives including IT and AV use are 5.5 million units in fiscal year 2002, 30 million units in FY 2003 and 66 million units in FY 2004. (SANYO Research)
In order to meet this brisk demand SANYO will increase production capacity of DVD recordable optical pickups from 1.6 million units in FY 2002 to 15 million units in FY 2003 and 35 million units in FY 2004. Also in FY 2004 plan to start production for AV use DVD recordable optical pickups. SANYO's total optical pickups including read only for FY 2002 were 163 million units, project 200 million units for FY 2003 and 250 million units for FY 2004. To go with the increase in production SANYO plans capital investment for optical pickups of 9 billion yen in FY 2003 and 13 billion yen in FY 2004.
SANYO's optical pickup business focused on IT related use had consolidated sales of 115.7 billion yen in FY2002 (an increase of 135% compared to previous year) expect a double digit percent increase in sales for FY 2003. SANYO has an industry leading 40% share of optical pickups (not including Mini Disks, Magneto Optical Disks, CD Video Games).
In addition to current CD and DVD use plan to continue and further develop SANYO's core competency of blue violet laser technology for the next generation of high storage capacity disks.
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