History (1989): 108,923 Writable Digital Optical Disk Drives Installed Worldwide

Rothchild Consultants (San Francisco, CA) evaluates that a total base of 108,923 writable digital optical disk drives was installed worldwide on June 1, 1989.

These figures include WORM and erasable optical disks, but not videodisks, writable or not, CD-ROMs and CD-Vs.

Eastman Kodak, practically the only one in the 14-inch ODD market, is having a hard time. This year, 5.25-inch format was already way over the 12-inch one in the WORM segment, two-times more drives were installed. The 8-inch format is almost exclusively used in Japan.

Rothchild’s survey also shows that, for the time being, write-once drives represent 93.8% of the total market.

Magneto-optical disks are just at their beginning but can be expected to make a stronger entry in the market than WORM disks. 3.5-inch magneto-optical drives are in small quantities because they are prototypes not available yet.

These figures were given by Edward S. Rothchild, in a conference on June 8 at the AIIM Show.

Writable digital optical disk drive shipments to date in the world

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠18, published on July 1989.