Production costs for HDD (hard disk drive) DVD recorders remain high and are unlikely to drop due to few back-end LSI (large scale integration) ICs and no locally produced HDDs for leading Taiwanese makers.
In a typical 160GB HDD DVD recorder, the HDD components and LSI ICs account for 30% and 10%, respectively, of the production price while loaders and pick-up heads take up another 20%, the sources pointed out. There currently are no makers of HDDs in Taiwan and local IC design houses are still endeavoring to reach sufficient supply for the needed LSI ICs, the sources indicated.
Although incapable of controlling the cost of some key components, Taiwanese makers are still strongly competitive in integrating the components into a final product, local maker Lite-On IT noted.
Story source:
digitimes.com.
