Sharp will increase its production of blue laser diodes

One of the reasons against mass acceptance of the Blu-ray readers is the low production of laser diodes and the fact that they are not cheap.
The situation seems about to change in a positive way. Sharp has announced that it will increase the production rate at its factories; from April onwards they will produce 700,000 diodes monthly compared to 500,000 now. Of course this is only a start. For the price to drop significantly, it will need more factories to move their production to this new product. However this is not so simple: they either have to develop new production techniques or they must pay heavy royalties to those who have already mastered it.