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.