According to the German website heise online, Sony has stopped development of its own variant of the Blu-ray format, Professional Disc For Data (PDD). Instead, the company plans to focus on the regular Blu-ray format. Translated from German:
Sony will not develop its memory system further Professional Disc for DATA ( PDD). The PDD is a professional version Blu ray of the Disc and stores 23 GByte on a cartridge Disc. The first drive assemblies came in the middle of 2004 on the market and should offer Plasmons Ultra Density Optical ( UDO) Paroli. According to own data Plasmon as well as HP holds however a market share of 95 per cent with the professional optical LIBRARIES. Udo media store 30 GByte on two sides. Their 5,25-Zoll-Cartridges is compatible to MO media and can be integrated thus into existing MO LIBRARIES - an advantage, which customers have obviously more estimated than the comparatively higher transfer rates of the PDD.
While Sony will not release new versions of PDD, the company will continue to sell the drives through 2007 and offer technical support until 2014. If you'd like to read more, the entire article can be found here.