Philips & Lite-On slashes Blu-ray price

Joint venture company Philips & Lite-On Digital Solutions has announced plans to cut the price of its internal Lite-On Blu-ray Disc Drive LH-2B1S in Europe.

The company said that the move was prompted by the greater availability of Blu-ray lasers.

Lite-On launched its LH-2B1S in November 2006, but due to an early global shortage of the actual Blu-ray lasers, prices of Blu-ray writers remained high relative to alternative systems and pricing had not moved since these were introduced.

"Now that Blu-ray lasers are not in [short supply] anymore, 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.

"We can see already a growing demand for Blu-ray. It looks like the format is getting more popular now that there are more playback devices and movie titles available in the market.

"We now have the possibility to lower our prices, to make our product available for a bigger group of customers and increase our sales quantity."

The joint company is expecting end user prices of €549, around €100 below the current average market price, for the LH-2B1S in the near future.

The LH-2B1S is sold in a retail box that includes a free Sata-cable and one BD-R disc. The drive can write BD media at 2x, and read and write CD and DVD media.