Yamaha Electronics Corp. announced today that it’s throwing in the towel in its efforts to get computer users to buy Yamaha-branded CD-RW optical drives.
| <?php virtual(“/includes/boxad.inc”); ?> |
Yamaha has maintained a presence in the recordable optical drive market for several years, but has struggled to differentiate its product line from other companies. The company has continuously released faster and more capable CD-RW models, culminating in last year’s CRW-F1 — a FireWire-based model that featured Yamaha’s own “Disc T@2” technology, which enables users to burn designs or imagery to the unused underside of CD-R discs.
Yamaha cited “uncharacteristically rapid price erosions, continuing market difficulties, and the highly volatile competitive environment” as its three reasons for discontinuing sales and marketing of its CD-RW drives.
Yamaha noted that this latest move doesn’t change its plans to offer other multimedia products for computers, including speakers, receivers, headphones and CD-R/RW media. What’s more, Yamaha said it would continue to offer CD-RW drives for music and audio applications.
Yamaha will continue to offer technical support and warranty service for its CD-RW drives for the full warranty period.