Sony to Increase Blue Diode Production

Sony announced its wish to strengthen its blue diode production and business to be able to face exploding requests. The goal is to ramp up production from current 1.7 million monthly units to 5 million blue laser diodes (BD playback-only equivalent).
Behind this announcement, one should not forget that there are 2 types of blue laser diode: those for BD playback and those for BD recorder, much more expensive (4-5 folds) and technologically more demanding. The main difference being their power, 20mW for BD player vs. 170mW for current BD recorder; while 240mW units should arrive by the end of the year for powering 6-8x BD-DVD burners.