ke4nt1
Group: Members
Posts: 2329
Joined: Oct. 2003 |
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Posted: June 07 2004,01:21 |
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In reading industry trade magazines, and talking with several of my vendors,
the market for business card CDR media is dwindling, with more custom
die-cut and screen-printed PRESSED cdr shapes in quantity, and made to
order, being more common nowdays.
The thrust of most writable manufacturers has been toward DVD-/+R media.
This is where most of the time and money is being invested.
The margins on selling cdr media nowdays is nowhere close to where
it was even 2 years ago. Adding additional steps to the manufacturing
process, such as die-cutting, pulls down the profit margins even more,
and drives up the cost at market. Many vendors have discontinued 50mm
disks completely, like Imation, and other retail names have stopped distribution.
With 120mm disks being imported at a price point under .09 - .12 / unit,
and manufacturing capacities vastly exceeding demand, there simply isn't
enough profit to continue investment on this technology. Many CD/CDROM
pressing facilities have folded, or shut down, due to overinvestment and
lack of capital/cash flow. Those that have survived are rapidly re-vamping
their equipment for the upcoming but expectedly short lifespan dvd-r market.
The 80mm mini round, commonly used as the stock for 50mm die-cuts, will
probably be here for a while longer, since the steps involved to produce
them mirror 120mm cdr production.
From what I'm reading, most true manufacturers
are pushing on with the 12x DVD-+R and Dual-Layer DVDR's .
Both of these drives are already availiable in stores and online.
Short of supplying audio duplicators with cdr stock, and with dvd drives
dropping in price FAST, CDR's may soon go the way of floppy disks and
zip drives, since the market for larger and faster storage capacities will push
the cdr technology to the "bottom-of-the-barrel", and beyond any profitability.
The cdr market has gone from a thriving business in the late 90's, to what has
become one of the most quickly maturing business models ever in the
history of publicly accepted audio formats.. The dvd-+r market threatens
to do the same at an ever faster pace.
Most all future computers built will not include either a floppy drive, or a
dedicated cdr drive.. As for now, dvd drives continue to be backwards
compatible with cdr technology, but with the upcoming "blue-ray" from Sony,
and the super-density discs being tested by Phillips, "CDR" compatibility
will become less of an issue for manufacturers looking for new markets..
So, it's 50mm/50mb polysubstrate disks today, tomorrow will be a paper
disk 50mm/10gb throwaway, and the near future will soon have 100-200gb
80mm disks that are not only rewritable, but biodegradable.
73
ke4nt
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