History (1990): $2.8 Billion Expected for Optical Disk Drive Industry in 1993 – Disk/Trend

WW revenues for optical disk drives reached $677 million in 1989, signaling a slower start for the industry than originally expected by many participating companies.

But continuing growth in many applications is now underway, and revenues are expected to grow to $2.8 billion in 1993, according to a recently published report on optical disk drives ($1,290) by Disk/Trend Inc. (Mountain View, CA).

Coverage of automated libraries for optical disk drives was also included in the 1990 report for the first time, indicating that 1,444 libraries were shipped in 1989, valued at $66.3 million.

The report notes that libraries, sometimes called ‘jukeboxes’, will greatly expand the efficient utilization of optical disk systems in many applications, and 1993 shipments are projected to rise to almost 25,000 units in 1993, representing revenues of $312.8 million.

Although optical disk drives are still more expensive and slower in performance than magnetic disk drives of equivalent capacity, WW shipments of optical disk drives with read/write capability for computer applications grew 91.5% in 1989, reaching 101,900 units.

Both price and performance are expected to gradually improve, however, and the 1993 unit shipment total is projected to climb to 995,300 drives.

In the most rapidly growing product group of read/write drives, those with capacities below 1GB, rewritable optical drives overtook shipments of write-once drives for the first time in 1989.

Rewritable drives will benefit from now underway to utilize them, and 1993 shipments of rewritable drives are expected to provide 89.5% of the 1993 unit total for read/write drives under 1GB in capacity.

Shipments of read-only CD-ROM drives are now in a rapid growth period, with highest growth occurring in the computer games market and in automotive applications for on-board map systems.

Strong growth in the US market for numerous PC-based applications also helped to stimulate WW shipment growth to 602,500 units in 1989, up 158% from 1988.

Continuing growth of existing CD-ROM markets, boosted from expected new multimedia applications, is projected to push unit shipments above 3 million in 1993.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠32, published on September 1990