CD-ROM drive makers are struggling to keep up with soaring demand for quad-speed drives. The home market is pushing demand up, while the professional user market has continued to grow steadily. Figures from Dataquest Inc project the world CD-ROM drive market to be 28.5m units this year, compared to 17.9m last year; with the European market expected to grow to 5.5m units by the end of the year from 3.4m in 1994 and the North American market to be 17.8m compared with 10.7m last time. Dataquest forecasts that the balance between supply and demand will even out in the late third quarter or early fourth. OEM pricing has seen a rise of between 5% and 8% as a result. The strength of the Japanese yen has kept the prices up as well because many of the drives are manufactured there. Japanese leaders Sony Corp, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co and Mitsumi Electric Co Ltd churn out 500,000 to 1m units a month. The boom in demand for personal computers and multimedia products in general has also created a worrying shortage of components in the industry. While some industry executives say the shortage is only a short-term one, others see it getting worse as the personal computer boom continues. It is possible that CD-ROM drives may be forced up in price due to the shortage, but consumers should be spared price hikes as other key components – such as iAPX-86-compatible microprocessors and disk drives – are now cheaper. At worst, the sharp declines in computer prices will slow down.
