Eindhoven, The Netherlands - Philips & Lite-On Digital Solutions (PLDS), the company that is responsible for the worldwide sales of Lite-On optical drives, decided to drop prices of its internal Lite-On Blu-ray Disc Drive LH-2B1S in Europe. With its LH-2B1S, Lite-On was one of the first brands in the world to offer a Blu-ray Disc Writer on the market in November 2006. Mainly due to a shortage of the Blu-ray lasers in the beginning, prices of Blu-ray writers did not really come down since the introduction of the product. 

"Now that Blu-ray lasers are not in big shortage anymore and we have accumulated enough stock of the product, we can lower the price and still fulfill the growing demand," says Katrin Ackermann, European sales Manager for PLDS. "We can see already a growing demand of Blu-ray. It looks like the format is getting more popular now that there are more playback devices and movie titles available in the market. Now we have the possibility to lower our prices, to make our product available for a bigger group of customers and increase our sales quantity. We are expecting end-user prices of EUR 549, around EUR 100 below the current average market price, for our LH-2B1S in the near future."

PLDS believes in the Blu-ray format and will continue to develop new Blu-ray products. Besides the current 2X BD Writer, PLDS is working on other Blu-ray solutions. Recently, the upcoming external version of the Lite-On Blu-ray drive was awarded with a prestigious red dot design award for its 'high design quality, expressing innovation in form and function in an exemplary manner'. This product is planned for commercial launch later this year. Furthermore a 4X BD Writer is on the roadmap.