Pioneer to Cease DVD Record Production

According to a report on Forbes, Pioneer will stop manufacturing DVD recorders this year due to heavy price competition in the industry.? The company says it is losing money on production of DVD recorders and plans to end its line while at the same time partnering with Matsushita (Panasonic) to reduce costs on future recorders.

Pioneer has been at the forefront of DVD technology since its inception, and was the world’s largest manufacturer and promoter of DVD recording technology back in 1999. Pioneer drives have been known to be top quality and it was well known for releasing newer high-speed recorders before anyone else.

Although DVD records will be out for Pioneer, the company said that it will now focus its resources on developing next-generation Blu-ray recorders. The partnership with Matsushita will also allow Pioneer to purchase recording chips at a major discount to reduce costs. DailyTech reported today that BenQ has announced its plans to be the first to release a Blu-ray recorder within this year.

Pioneer reported a loss of over 10 billion Yen, roughly $89 million USD in just the DVD recording market alone.

Story from DailyTech.com

This entry was posted on Monday, June 5th, 2006 at 5:14 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.