Lite-On IT, a leading producer of optical disc drives (ODDs), is conservative about the market growth of Blu-ray disc (BD) standard this year. Nevertheless, despite of uncertain prospects of BD in China now that CBHD format outsells Blu-ray, the company has no plans to enter the market of CBHD optical drives.

Chief executive officer of Lite-On, Guang-chung Chen, said at a press conference in Taipei, Taiwan that considerable expansion of the global BD player market depends on price drops of BD movie discs and penetration of high-definition TVs, reports DigiTimes web-site. While the pricing of HDTVs has been going down for several years now, the cost of Blu-ray movies remains rather high. As a result, Lite-On maintains rather conservative predictions of Blu-ray disc market expansion.

Despite of high cost, the end of format war and gradual decrease of Blu-ray players’ prices have helped the format to capture relatively tangible market share in the U.S. Therefore, it is crucial for Lite-On and other ODD manufacturers not to be too conservative. While DVD remains de-facto standard both for home video and data archives, the Blu-ray is becoming more and more popular.

At present movies on Chinese CBHD format (which is largely based on HD DVD technology) outsell movies on BD three to one in China and it will be hard to push Blu-ray to that market, according to Mr. Chen. But Lite-On IT has no plans to manufacture CBHD players for the time being, the head of the company stressed.

Tags: Blu-ray, CBHD, Lite-On, HD DVD