Daxon quits production of optical discs

[Ian]

This took me by surprise. According to DigiTimes, Daxon has quit production of optical disc and has sold their equipment to Ritek.

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20100125PD203.html

Ritek, on January 22, announced that it has signed an MOU with fellow Taiwan-based Daxon to purchase the latter's optical disc manufacturing equipment at a total price of up to NT$500 million (US$15.6 million).

The equipment will be mainly used to increase its production of Blu-ray Disc discs, Ritek pointed out.

Daxon has stepped into production of polarizers, optical thin-films, and polymer synthetic materials, and has decided to quit production of optical discs, the company pointed out.

[redk9258]

I've never seen or heard of Daxon. Are they OEM for other brands?

[Ian]

They're part of the BenQ group.

http://www.daxontech.com/about_e_en.htm

The thing that saddens me the most is that they were making Sony's optical discs which were quite good.

[lordsmurf]

This is pretty terrible news, to be honest. We're now left with only two top quality blank discs: Mitsubishi Verbatim and JVC Taiyo Yuden. The loss of Sony Daxon is bad enough, but Ritek is the unreliable schlock that will take its place? I guess it could have been worse. I wonder what Sony plans to do? (Or if Ritek now owns some some of Sony-Daxon contract.)