Verbatim/Mitsubishi 2005 press release, industry status [Archived]

[kpmedia]

This is interesting:

Quote:

Verbatim Global Recordable CD and DVD Media Sales

Verbatim announced that for the second year in a row it has been named the leading supplier of recordable media worldwide by the Santa Clara Consulting Group. The reports show that Verbatim and Mitsubishi Kagaku Media, not only maintained the Nr. 1 position worldwide but also increased global market share of recordable CDs and DVDs. Their worldwide dominance in the DVD media markets was evident in the report's shipments section, which lists Verbatim / MKM shipments of recordable DVD media in 2005 as 531.249 million - 23.3% more than its competitor. Of the five DVD formats tracked in the report, DVD-R was the most DVD format in 2005 with 59% of DVD recordable disc sales.

Global Recordable CD & DVD Media
Verbatim and Mitsubishi Kagaku Media leads the global DVD-R market with a 17% market share for all of 2005. In the DVD+R segment, which accounted for 34.2% of worldwide DVD recordable sales in 2005, Verbatim/MKM leads with 17.77 percent of the market. Verbatim / MKM also leads the global CDR market with 15.1 percent of CD-R sales and 19.8 percent of CD-RW.

High-speed burners and recorders
Driving Verbatim and Mitsubishi Kagaku Media's growing market share is the company's ability to combine high reliability, stability and longevity with high performance and broad compatibility. With 16x DVD writers accounting for the majority of the CD/DVD burners being sold today, consistent media quality has become even more important for professionals, businesses and consumers because higher-speed burners and recorders are less tolerant of media imperfections.

Metal AZO Recording layer technology
Verbatim and Mitsubishi Kagaku Media DVDR discs are produced with patented Metal AZO recording layer technology which provides increased sensitivity to laser light - the key requirement for high-speed recording. It also controls the heat interference between consecutive recorded marks. This substantially reduces the jitter and enables superior recording characteristics across the entire range of available recording speeds, from 1x through 16x. In addition to the superior recording layer, the discs are manufactured using Verbatim's precision molding technology which ensures a consistently flat disc surface and minimizes errors during high-speed recording.

Blu-ray and High Definition DVD media technology
To maintain its leadership position, Verbatim and Mitsubishi Kagaku Media continues to develop advanced and innovative storage solutions for the future, including Blu-ray and High Definition DVD (HD DVD) media technology. Verbatim brand media is marketed in North America, Europe, Latin America and other areas of the world. In Japan, media is sold under the Mitsubishi brand.

About Verbatim / Mitsubishi Kagaku Media
Verbatim / MKM is an international organization that develops and markets innovative, high-quality products for storing, moving and using digital content. Known for its leadership in the removable storage media and related accessories markets, the company provides reliable, unique technologies and products that are highly sought after and broadly distributed worldwide.

It's a shame that the Great Recession of 2007-2009, devaluation of the CD/DVD blanks industry (due to a mix of oversupply and consumer cheapness), and related issues have caused Verbatim to outsource to CMC and Ritek for the newer "Value Series" and "Life Series" media rather than continue with their own near-100% use (at least in North America) of MCC/MKM blanks.

2005 really was a good year for video, be it DVD blanks, video capture cards or DVD recorders. Everything has just seemed to be so downhill from that high a half decade ago.

Archived for posterity.

[kpmedia]

And here's another one from March 2005:

Quote:

Mitsubishi Kagaku Media Co., Ltd. - Market leader with a unique business style

Mitsubishi Kagaku Media Co., Ltd. (MKM) has marketed a succession of new products. As digital images are becoming more important in TV and other media, DVD now plays a central role as recording media. The company's development efforts, technological capabilities, and marketing strategy are on the cutting edge of the trend.

What kind of a product is a DVD?

DVD used to stand for 'digital versatile disc' or 'digital video disc', but it is now a collective term that means both. A DVD is a disc that has a diameter of 12 cm and a thickness of 1.2 mm, similar to the size of a CD, but the primary difference between them is the size of its storage capacity. DVDs were originally DVD-ROMs - discs that were developed for the sole purpose of playing back video and designed to be compact and have a high image and sound quality. The advent of DVD-Rs was the result of simplifying the process of creating DVD-ROMs. Traditionally, creating DVD-ROMs required many steps before completion. If even the slightest mistake was made at any one of these steps, everything had to be done all over again from the beginning because the disc was intended for playback only. Mistakes made while making DVD-Rs, however, could be corrected by checking the contents of the disc immediately after the data is recorded on it because the DVD-R could be written on once. This was how the time to create DVD-ROMs was shortened with the development of DVD-Rs.

At the same time, the market demanded for discs that could be used as computer storage devices or home video media, and the need for a recordable disc consequently grew. Recordable discs are now used in various applications, such as car navigation systems, video recording, and storage devices for computer and game software, and disc formats have extended to include ROM for playback only, R to 'write once, read many', and RW and RAM to 'write many, read many'. The first generation of DVD-Rs had a capacity of 3.95 GB, which was lower than that of ROM discs (4.7 GB). The DVD-Rs and DVD+Rs that followed had, after successive improvements, the same capacity and playback compatibility as corresponding ROM discs. The products that are currently on the market can now record data eight times faster than those of the first generation.

What is the secret behind our increasing sales volume and our competitive edge?

We believe our strength stems from the fact that we were always able to market state-of-the-art products ahead of our competitors through our own research and development efforts and manufacturing technologies and by ensuring competitive prices and a stable supply by shifting the focus of mass production to overseas sites. As for sales activities, we endeavored to establish a strong relationship with our customers because we were the new kid on the block who only sold discs, unlike our competitors who were already well-established selling video tapes.

'Mass sales stores' across Japan, which now play a vital role in selling products, determine the fate of a product's sales by the way it is displayed in a store, which means that display methods are an important key to selling products. Therefore, to adopt the display method that is currently most effective, you must constantly collect up-to-date information on how to arrange products on store shelves, where to display them, and the state of your competitors' products. For this reason, we deploy 'rounders' - people in charge of visiting and checking stores in the prefecture where they reside - and assign each of them a PDA with which to share the information they have collected. This system enables rounders to regularly send the latest information on the status of each store to the center, where sales representatives are staffed, and the center to issue appropriate instructions on how to display products to each rounder. It also enables rounders to generate reports on the spot. In this way, we are able to take prompter, more accurate action than any other company, and this responsiveness greatly contributes to improving our relationship with our customers.

What epoch-making events have we made?

The key event was the in-house development of AZO dye, which is based on the dye technology we had been working on. AZO dye is a kind of dyestuff used in data recording layers. Because AZO dye is resistant to ultraviolet light and high temperatures over hundreds of hours, products in which AZO dye is used are very durable, highly stable in light, and have excellent storage stability. Such products can keep important stored data stable. Today, we offer a lineup of AZO dye-based products that supports higher speeds and account for as much as 70% of the world's AZO dye market share. We produce stampers(1*) on which high-precision disc substrates are based using select mastering technologies(2*) we created through developing MO disks. We developed these basic materials completely in-house and established process and manufacturing technologies through mass-production trials at our plant in Singapore. This business style, in which we transfer our technologies to overseas sites (e.g., considering market trends for products manufactured in Singapore and mass-producing them in Taiwan and India), and the development, manufacturing, and sale of discs can be seen as a totally new, unparalleled management approach that only MKM could possibly take.

As for sales activities, a promotional product for one of the Godzilla movies was provided through a tie-up with Toho Co., Ltd., and attracted public attention in 2003, helping us improve the Mitsubishi brand rating and succeed in setting a stepping stone to the consumer-electronics industry. The product was a disc called Cine-R, which had the reel of a cinema projector designed on its surface. The advertising campaign we launched for our 'impression forever DVD', which provided clearer playback scenes of the new Godzilla movie that marked the 50th anniversary of the celluloid monster, ended in favorable public acceptance. Initially, we started selling Cine-Rs in DVD-R format only. However, in response to strong demand from users and changes in the market, we introduced DVD-RWs, DVD-RAMs, and DVD+RWs that had a different reel design each. We shall strive to further increase our share of the market by continuing to plan new promotions, develop unparalleled product concepts, and create products that reflect the opinions of users.

What is the current state of development of our products and what future tasks do we face?

DVD+R DL (8.5GB) -- Current major playback-only DVD discs used in the movie and car navigation fields are called DVD9, which have double recording layers and a capacity of 8.5 GB. Recordable DVD discs, however, have a capacity of only 4.7 GB. If you could develop a double layer recordable DVD disc, you could continuously record a large volume of data on a single disc that would have had to be stored on two separate discs earlier. We listed a double layer recordable DVD as one of the products we developed a few years ago, but at the time we thought it would not feasible to develop it. However, Royal Philips Electronics later proposed to us the joint-development of DVD+R with double layers on one side, which caused us to start investigating the feasibility of developing such discs. Through many trials and tribulations, we worked the idea to a practical level and managed to finally market the product in late May 2004. Our members, including engineering staff, still continue to put forth extraordinary effort to spread this new product, the first of its kind, as fast as possible throughout the world. In addition, we started selling 8x DVD-Rs and 4x DVD-RWs, which are used to record videos, to support higher speeds in the middle of May 2004. They are new products that provide substantial reductions in rewrite time when copying data from a hard disk.

Blu-ray Disc -- Optical discs have been progressing from write-once discs for business to MOs, CDs, and DVDs. Now, blue-laser discs, which have been described as the next generation discs, have appeared in the market, and we have already brought our Blu-ray discs (which are capable of recording a digital high-vision broadcasting program for two hours in standard mode) to the market that looks at the future proliferation of terrestrial digital broadcasting. In addition, our Mizushima Plant started producing UDO discs that support blue lasers in autumn 2004. Each of our new products has been realized with efforts many people invested who were involved in optical discs in the past.

*1 Precise master molds used in forming grooves when producing optical discs with an injection molding machine
*2 Process in which master product discs, such as those used in making software or music discs, are created

Mitsubishi Kagaku Media Co., Ltd.
1-23 Shiba 4-chome, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8415
TEL: [+81] (0)3-5484-3972

NOTE: This old document is still available on their site at http://www.m-kagaku.co.jp/english/mo...ny/200503.html
Archived here for historical DVD media industry value.