DVD Media Prices

[quantum]

You can get quality CDR blanks for about 30 cents each. It took years to eventually settle around this price.

The price for DVD-R blanks are dropping. Where will the prices bottom out?

[Kedirekin]

DVDR prices (for branded media) have already reached, and occasionally exceeded, price parity with CDR. In other words, you can get one DVDR for about the same price as 6½ CDRs ($2.00 ~= 6½ * $0.30).

Incidentally, in my experience branded CDRs have settled around 40¢ per piece in bulk, exluding sales and rebates. With sales and rebates, I've gotten CDRs for as little as 7¢ per piece. I have never gotten DVDR for 45¢ per piece.

I expect that in the near term (maybe the next 18 months), non-sale price branded DVDR will drop to about $1 per piece. In the long term I expect that to drop to about 50¢, but that's really just a guess.

[gooki]

I would expect quality unbranded media (ritek etc) to settle around the $0.90 per disc mark.

[erbuk]

This is what I've heard:

CD:r discs are too cheap to generate any profit right now. The reason is that the procucton capacity is larger then the demand leading to overproduction.

Just like in, for example, DRAM-production there are only two modes; full production and no production. You can't save much money by cutting production cause the big cost is in the investment (the plant) not in personnel and raw-materials. And you can't build up large stocks cause of the short life-cycle of the product. You only risk ending up with a stock of outdated products that you can't sell.

So the only solution is to lower the prices and take whatever incomes you can get or close the plant and loose your investment.

There are no new investments in CD:r production right now and once some of the current plants are forced to close the prices will go up.