Chinese to switch from DVD to EVD in 2008

The western are used to see big electronic gadget discounts at Best Buy or any other consumer stores as the Technologies become mature. Just think about the $39USD DVD players sold on Black Friday every year after Thanksgiving. This is achievable because in many cases, 2nd tier and 3rd tier electronic manufacturers catch up the technology and bring down the system cost through competition. The beneficiary is the consumer.

Remember the dates when a portable CD player was as heavy as a brick but cost >$200? Well, a no-name CD player sold in Wal-mart today is as cheap as $9.99, with 40-sec anti-skip and FM and MP3 support! By the way, does anyone still use a CD player anymore?!

So, what's the point? The point is ...those 2nd tier and 3rd tier players are mostly located in Asia with emphasis in Taiwan and China. They pay royalty fees to the 1st tier companies who patented the technology, and they fight on operating cost and system BOM to gain market share to survive. This is how a $200 CD player can become a $10 CD player and a $300 DVD player can become a $100 DVD Recorder. Also, the massive cheap labor in mainland China is supporting the evolution....But, not any more.

A Sony Blue-ray player is sold in Best Buy for $999.99 today. How long would it take for a no-name brand to bring down its cost and make the product widely available for the public at <$100USD? I think it will be much longer than what you think it will be. According to this article, 20 DVD manufacturing firms in China have signed an agreement to start manufacturing homegrown disc format called EVD. Not only so, the EVD will replace DVD (and future HD-DVD and Blue-ray) exclusively by 2008.

"This "Red-ray" HD approach promises to support resolutions up to 1080p without a need to increase disc capacity significantly, and will allow them to launch with players at the same price as current DVD -only models."

So the cheap Chinese are not so cheap any more. They're on their way to make own revolution. Too bad Sony and any other players in the market just lost their tickets into the Chinese market because their prices will not be competitive enough, and they will also have to license the technology from the Chinese firms, if they want to make EVD players. Without high volumes to absorb the R&D investment and technology spending for Blue-ray and/or HD-DVD, I'd expect to not owning a HD-DVD/Blue-ray player for much longer.....


Tags: Blue-ray, HD-DVD, EVD, News