Price of DVD-use chips falling faster than expected

The prices of DVD recorder-use chipsets like a servo IC and a single integrated MPEG-2 chip have fallen from approximately $40-$45 to $35 at the end of Q3 this year. The price drop was faster than expected, and presumably because of the competition from Taiwanese chip suppliers, of which some recently started sampling chips supporting the DVD-Dual standard.

The decline was faster than expected, the sources said. In early December, international suppliers, including Philips Semiconductors, ESS Technology, LSI Logic and Cirrus Logic, projected the chipset prices to drop to US$35 in the first half of next year.

Source: DigiTimes