This is what I posted at CDFreaks Recording Hardware Forum just a while ago about it.
Samsung officially announced 16x DVD writer this week. They are planning to sell them from early August. It's not the first time for Samsung to leap ahead of LG.
Seriously, the only competition Samsung takes seriously is LG.
According to Digital Times of South Korea, year 2004's DVD writer market will look like this.
Total 38 million shipped units
LG ships 7-8 million
Next will be: NEC, Pioneer, Samsung Electronics, Lite-On IT, Matsushita
I'm not sure why the article says Matsushita is the one of the two makers producuing 16x DVD writers. The other is Taiwan's BenQ. Perhaps the reporter is confusing Matsushita with Pioneer.
Samsung will produce 16x DVD writers in their Philippinnes factory. LG has capacity of over one million DVD writers a month in Pyungtaek factory of South Korea though they also have factories in China. Samsung wants to take the top seat by the end of next year and plans to sell 15 million DVD writer units in 2004. They expect the yearly shipped number of DVD writer market in 2004 will surpass 50 million. I think the number could be much higher than 50 million depending on competitions and how PC makers like HP and Dell will include 16x DVD writers as standard as FDDs and HDDs.
I am quite aware that most people here don't care much about Samsung DVD writers. However, that doesn't affect the market by that much. Who said Samsung DRAM was best 5 years ago or even now?