Taiwan discs makers expected to benefit from lowered DVD-R royalty

The DVD6C Licensing Group announced to reduce 30.8 percent

of the royalty charge for DVD-R discs from US$0.065 to US$0.045 per disc. The

lowered royalty will be retroactive to Jan 1, 2006. Taiwan disc makers are expec­ted

to benefit from the reduction. The indus­try indicated that the optical discs

makers have faced difficulties in recent years while many makers cannot maintain

their opera­tions. Since Taiwan disc makers have had to pay high royalty charge

before, the royalty reduction this time will help to lower the production cost

of the DVD-R discs and is expec­ted to boost the production volume of DVD-R

discs to surpass the production volume of CD-R. The institutional investor

indicated that it seems the spring of optical discs has come because the EU has

stopped the investigation of anti-dumping of CD-R and DVD6C decided to reduce

the royalty charge.