Philips Lite-On drops Blu-ray drive price

The cost of archiving corporate data on Blu-ray discs is set for a sudden decrease as one leading manufacturer announces price cuts on its Blu-Ray drives.

A price war engulfing the next generation format could be imminent as optical drive joint venture Philips Lite-On Digital Solutions moved to cut the price of its internal Lite-On Blu-ray Disc Drive LH-2B1S in Europe by £60.

The company said it was able to cut the prices of its Blu-ray drives because Blu-ray lasers are in more plentiful supply. A global shortage of the component meant that when the drive was originally launched in November last year, the price for the device remained high relative to other high capacity storage systems.

"Now that Blu-ray lasers are not in short supply, and we have accumulated enough stock of the product, we can lower the price and still fulfil the growing demand," said Katrin Ackermann, European sales manager at Philips and Lite-On Digital Solutions.

She said that the company was expecting prices of the internal drives to be €549 (£350), around €100 (£60) below the current average market price. The drive can write Blu-ray disks at 2X speeds and also read and writes CD and DVD disks. A single layer Blu-ray disc can store up to 25GB of data, which is five times more then a DVD.

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