Combo Drives are gaining market share

The growing trend in computing is efficiency. Faster computers with peripherals that are smaller in size and with increased power, speed and functionality. A small notebook might weigh as less as 1.2 kg and would have one integral part to make this notebook the smallest--a combo drive.

These tiny computers usually come equipped with one 5-1/4 inch drive bay for an optical drive of some sort. Until about a couple of years ago, one had the choice between a CD burner or a DVD-ROM drive. To some people, this would be a hard decision seeing that most people like to watch DVDs and like to burn their favorite music from time to time. And if there was a combo drive on the market at the time, the units themselves were very expensive and gained functionality lost performance across the board. Well, those days are no more.

Latest combo drives come with the double edge--good price points and rugged performance levels. The drives can read DVD media and read and write CD media and also provide

DVD-Video playback.

Elaborated R Manikandan, DGM (Sales and Marketing), LG Electronics India Pvt Ltd, "The awareness for the combo drives was there, but last quarter sales are also justifying the educational levels. End consumer is migrating to better technology and price differentials are also bridging. Combo drive is giving double edge to the user, protection from technical redundancy and more features." He added that LG was selling few numbers till last quarter, but recently the company has seen a surge in sales.

Moninder Jain, National Marketing Manager, Samsung Electronics India Ltd, said that the market response is tremendous.

"We were expecting to sell not more than 4,000 units across India and now the sales are nearly 7,000 units." These numbers are pretty indicative of the growth of combo drives in India.

But then there are some who have a different opinion. Vivek Bhatia, BDM, Adcom, said, "The market is not developed as it was expected because the DVD is not very popular in India due to the high price of media. Second reason for this is the low price of CDRs. Moreover, if you buy CDRW than one has liberty to choose 40x or 48x or even 52x also, but none in a combo drive and no customization."

The pros of combo drives are outweighing the cons and its market share is augmenting rapidly, especially with more and more vendors coming in the market fray.

Shweta Khanna