With CD-writers selling like hot cakes in Mumbai, vendors are all out to
launch CD-writers with faster speeds. The race is now for 40x CD-writers. Almost
all the optical storage devices (OSD) vendors have reported decent growth in
this segment in the last one year. In the absence of official figures, market
sources put the growth to have doubled in the last quarter.
The reason for high growth in CD-writer sales is because of its affordability
and reliability. The prices of CD-writers have been falling in the last two
years, and the present price range of Rs 5000 to Rs 13000 is almost half of what
it used to be last year. But, resellers say that prices of CD-writers have hit
the lowest and cannot go down further at least for sometime now.
A couple of months ago, Asus, Iomega and Plextor launched the fastest CDRW at
40x speed. "These writers are so fast that it can write a 650MB CD in just
two minutes," says a reseller.
Recently, LG also launched its 40x model. And very soon Benq and Sony is
expected to launch the 40x model. Surprisingly, Samsung is yet to make any
announcement with regard to launching 40x model from their stable.
According to some vendor, the next fastest model to hit the market is 48x.
However, they are just waiting for supporting CD-R medias to hit the market.
Presently, 24x and 32x models are moving fast because of their low price in the
SOHO segment.
While LG claim to be the leader in OSD business, there are reports that
vendors like Benq, Samsung and Iomega are doing fairly good business in the home
segment. Plextor and Yamaha are doing well in the high-end market. Apparently,
the exit of HP from CD-writer business, has also helped many of these vendors to
come out strong.
NELSON JOHNY, MUMBAI