Philips Electronics said today it had initiated shipments of its new 16x DVD burner to main PC manufacturers who will integrate the drives as standard in their new PC systems over coming season. The company anticipates the new drives to be available on the market in about a week time. At the same time, a number of Asian companies said they are unlikely to start volume shipments of 16x DVD writers earlier than in Fall.

Philips' latest DVD+R/+RW writer offers the consumer the highest performance and flexibility not only in DVD creation (16x write DVD+R, 2.4x DVD+R DL (dual-layer), 4x rewrite DVD+RW, 16x read DVD-ROM), but also in CD creation (40x write CD-R, 24x rewrite CD, 40x read CD-ROM) making it today’s most exciting high-performance storage device integrated in standard PCs.

Some Japanese and Taiwanese companies, such as Pioneer, Sony, BenQ, Lite-On and ASUSTeK reportedly said they would postpone the volume production of 16x DVD burners at least till the end of July citing inadequate supply of appropriate laser diodes because of insufficient yields as well as necessity to match 16x DVD burners with 16x DVD+R discs, DigiTimes reported.

For personal computer makers the drive will cost about 80 or 90 euros, while customers will have to pay about 180 euros, according to a Reuters report.

Philips expects 16x DVD writers to become mainstream for PC systems by the end of 2004 and plans to have productions volume at 600 thousand units per month in anticipation of the expected increase in market demand.