NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 23,
1999--Hewlett-Packard Company, MCC/Verbatim, Philips Electronics,
Ricoh Company Ltd., Sony Corporation and Yamaha Corporation, the
industry leaders in CD-ReWritable technology, today announced
their plans for shipping DVD+RW (DVD+ReWritable) drives and media.
The announcement was made here at PC Expo, which runs through June
24.
HP, Sony and Philips announced
that limited quantities of DVD+RW drives are currently being made
available to strategic industry partners, with worldwide volumes
expected to begin shipping this fall. MCC/Verbatim verified that
it would ship DVD+RW media in the fall. Ricoh and Yamaha did not
make specific product-availability announcements, but confirmed
their commitment to the DVD+RW format. These six companies
represent approximately 75 percent of the CD-ReWritable worldwide
market, according to Santa Clara Consulting, a Calif.-based
consulting group.
The 3GB DVD+RW specification is a
natural evolution of the successful CD-RW format and provides
customers with a growth path from CD to DVD. "DVD+RW
technology is the best solution for rewritable DVD because of the
link to CD-RW," said Robert van Eijk, vice president of Philips
Optical Storage. "We are committed to providing DVD+RW
products for both data and consumer video-recording
applications."
Because DVD+RW discs do not
require a cartridge, they potentially can be read by DVD-ROM
drives at virtually no additional cost. "We are on track to ship
our first DVD+RW products this fall," said Dirk Peters, general
manager of Value-Added Products for Sony Electronics' Component
Company. "We're excited that DVD+RW provides consumers with
much-needed disc space without sacrificing compatibility."
DVD+RW is expected to appeal to
home- and business-PC users who use memory-intensive applications
that require high performance and capacity, such as multimedia,
graphics, CAD, document imaging, digital photography and video
applications. "Our customers have told us that they need
higher speeds and more capacity," said Mike Matson, vice
president and general manager of HP's Information Storage Group.
"DVD+RW follows the same trend in storage capacity as
computer systems -- higher performance and larger capacity."
MCC/Verbatim, a leading storage
media supplier, confirmed that it would be shipping DVD+RW media
in the fall. "MCC has been on the forefront of developing
DVD+RW media," said Yoshimitsu Kobayashi, general manager of the
Information Storage Products Department of MCC/Verbatim. "We
have our production lines in place and are looking forward to
shipping DVD+RW media for these exciting new products."
In addition to DVD+RW media,
DVD+RW drives can read DVD-ROM, DVD movie, CD-RW, CD-Recordable
(CD-R), CD-ROM and CD audio.
About HP's Information Storage
Group
HP's Information Storage Group,
which focuses on the rapidly growing extended-storage market,
manufacturers and sells information-storage products based on
tape, magneto-optical and CD-RW technologies. HP storage solutions
include digital-audio-tape (DAT) drives and digital-linear-tape (DLT)
libraries, minicartridge (QIC) tape drives and software, CD-ReWritable
drives, and magneto-optical drives and jukeboxes.
About HP
Hewlett-Packard Company -- a
leading global provider of computing and imaging solutions and
services for business and home -- is focused on capitalizing on
the opportunities of the Internet and the proliferation of
electronic services.
HP had computer-related revenue of
$39.5 billion in its 1998 fiscal year. HP plans to launch a new
company consisting of its industry-leading test-and-measurement,
semiconductor products, chemical-analysis and medical businesses.
These businesses represented $7.6 billion of HP's total revenue in
fiscal 1998. With leading positions in multiple market segments,
this technology-based company will focus on opportunities such as
communications and life sciences.
HP has 123,000 employees worldwide
and had total revenue of $47.1 billion in its 1998 fiscal year.
Information about HP, its products and the company's Year 2000
program can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.hp.com.
About Mitsubishi Chemical
Corporation
Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation (MCC)
is Japan's largest chemical company and one of the world's leading
manufacturers of information storage products. In a line-up of
data and image storage media, MCC holds a strong market share in
markets such as DVD-R disks, CD-R and CD-RW disks, 90 mm and 130
mm MO disks, 130 mm WORM disks, hard disk media, as well as tape
cartridges and floppy disks. Many of these products are marketed
through Verbatim Corporation, which is a wholly owned subsidiary
of MCC. Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation has approximately 12,000
employees, and on a consolidated basis recorded revenues of
approximately $13 billion for the year ended March 31, 1998.
About Philips Electronics
Philips Optical Storage, a
business group of Philips Electronics, is widely recognized as an
industry leader in Compact Disc and related technologies, products
and markets since the introduction of the first audio CD product
in 1982. Philips is a major supplier of CD-ROM subassemblies and
components to drive manufacturers and leads the industry in the
rapidly growing market for CD-ReWritable drives. Through its
strong position in both CD and DVD technologies, Philips is well
positioned to offer leading-edge optical storage solutions to PC
and audio/video markets for many years to come.
Royal Philips Electronics of the
Netherlands is one of the world's biggest electronics companies
and Europe's largest, with sales of US$ 33.9 billion in 1998. It
is a global leader in color television sets, lighting, electric
shavers, color picture tubes for televisions and monitors, and
one-chip TV products. Its 233,700 employees in more than 60
countries are active in the areas of lighting, consumer
electronics, domestic appliances, components, semiconductors,
medical systems, business electronics, and IT services (Origin).
Philips is quoted on the NYSE, London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and
other stock exchanges. News from Philips is located at www.news.philips.com.
About Ricoh Company, Ltd.
Ricoh Company, Ltd. is one of the
world's leading manufacturers of office equipment, including
copiers, facsimiles and printers. Ricoh is the first manufacturer
of CD-RW media and CD-R/RW drives, and is also a manufacturer of
CD-R media. Ricoh immediately incorporates the latest CD-RW
standards to produce high-speed reliable products. With the
combination of media and drive technology, Ricoh is offering high
performance and reliable optical disc products. The Ricoh group
consists of 125 consolidated subsidiaries and affiliates in Japan
and 203 overseas, which include production, sales as well as
research and development facilities. As of March 1999, the Ricoh
group employed approximately 65,000 people with recorded annual
revenues of $11.8 billion.
About Sony Corporation
Sony Corporation is a leading
manufacturer of audio, video, communications and information
technology products for the consumer and professional markets. Its
music, pictures and computer entertainment operations make Sony
one of the most comprehensive companies in the world. Sony
recorded consolidated annual sales of over $56 billion for the
fiscal year ended March 31, 1999.
As a leader of disc-based
technologies, Sony manufactures and sells a variety of storage
solutions, including media products such as CD, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW,
DVD-video, DVD-ROM, Recordable MD, 90 and 130 mm MO and WORM
discs, and 300 mm WORM discs, as well as disc drives, such as FDD,
CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD+RW, and MO. Sony also offers
large storage DDS and AIT tape drives.
About Yamaha Corporation
Yamaha Corporation, the world's
largest musical instrument manufacturer, offers a diversity of
sound, music and multimedia products. Though Yamaha products have
changed with the times and have seen extensive diversification,
neither our products nor the foundation of our business has
strayed from our original focus on sound. New Yamaha business
ventures are expanding from our fundamental expertise in sound,
music and multimedia.
Multimedia is an area of explosive
growth, and innovative products such as Yamaha sound and image LSI
are used widely in computers and game units. Yamaha also
anticipates a substantial increase in CD-RW drives and other
product sales central to the fast developing field of information
technology.
Yamaha now owns 44 subsidiaries
and representative offices in overseas markets in addition to
numerous related companies in Japan. Yamaha recorded annual sales
of $4.9 billion in the fiscal year ended March 31, 1998.
Contact:
Hewlett-Packard Company
Caroline Brown, 970/635-6480
[email protected]
or
MCC/Verbatim
Gerry Kelly, +81-33-283-6760
[email protected]
or
Philips Electronics
Gary Yoshimura, 408/570-5693
[email protected]
or
Ricoh Company, LTD.
Hideaki Oba, +81-45-477-1831
[email protected]
or
Sony Corporation
Jim Leal, 408/955-4469
[email protected]
or
Yamaha Corporation
Atsushi Muramatsu, +81-53-962-3125
[email protected]
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