News for Thursday, 26 February 2009

Seagate announced to have stopped a patent suit launched against the SDD manufacturer Stec. Seagate was claiming that Stec was using some of its patents in its SSD products directly competing with Seagate HD models. According to a Seagate representative, the legal action is no longer worth the cost because the poor economic condition compromised Stec's sales of products containing the disputed technology.
From the beginning, many analysts and IT websites (including us) were considering this legal action as a way to slow down SSD development in order to allow Seagate to catch up. Stec might be the first target having its dispute with Seagate settled; other companies sued by Seagate for the same technology might also experience a similar happy end.
It is now time for Seagate to quickly offer competitive SSD models in order to capture some market share before being definitely out of the game. Seagate CEO was recently changed most likely for not having been able to embark on this technology.

Some data released made the BD Alliance shocked and could question the real future of BD. According to a survey 82% of movies available on a BD disc were not sold. Of course, this is not a disaster as such disc might be sold later on, cheaper, or will be used to populate shelves with movies in BD format in shops. But for sure, the BD group would have preferred to see the BD format finally massively adopted by consumers.
Panasonic, Phillips and Sony, creators of the new format, decided to modify the licensing agreement and associated fee on media in order to boost BD usage and mass adoption. They have created a single license allowing manufacturers to produce BD media, players and burners at a much lower cost. Prices will now be as follow: 9.5 USD for a BD player, 14 USD for a burner, 0.11 USD for a pre-recorded media, 0.12 USD for a blank media and 0.14 USD for a rewritable media. If those figures remain rather high, it will simplify the licensing scheme for many manufacturers and we could finally see more competition and lower prices for blue laser-based products.