Ritek, the world’s largest CD-R disc manufacturer, said that fueled by the rising popularity of recordable DVD drives, it projects worldwide consumption of recordable DVD discs will conservatively reach 320 million units in 2003, with an optimistic projection of 400 million to 500 million units.

Company CEO Gordon Yeh estimated that demand for DVD-R discs will be about 160 million units while demand for the DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW and DVD-RAM formats will be about 40 million discs each.

Yeh said the DVD-R disc is the mainstream DVD format at present, but DVD+R discs are showing signs of rising to dominance. According to Yeh, Ritek’s share of the worldwide DVD+R disc market was 78.9% over the first three quarters of 2002. The company has been shipping 4x DVD+R discs and expects to introduce 8x and 12x discs next year.

In addition to its high market share in DVD+R discs, the company’s DVD-R discs also captured about a 26-27% share and its DVD-RW discs a 25% share.

Separately, Yeh said the quoted price for CD-R discs will cease declining and be stable next year due as production capacity is increasingly converted to DVD disc production. Yeh explained that without further expanding factories, most companies will make DVD discs on what were originally CD-R disc production lines next year. Therefore, Yeh estimated that the quoted price for CD-R discs will continue its recent climb, rising to an average of US$0.01 per blank disc. The price hike will continue until the first quarter of next year, he added.