"...Philips Electronics sees a bright future for CD-ReWritable. With Philips' drive shipments alone expected to exceed 10 million this year and 20 million in 2001, CD-RW's popularity has prompted further development of the format, and Philips has now made improving ease-of-use the top priority. New technologies, the availability of low-cost media and an industry-wide initiative -- Mt. Rainier -- are widely expected to make CD-RW the new 'floppy disc.'

The success of the format is already proven -- 3 billion CD-R/RW discs will ship this year and then there is the compatibility with the existing worldwide installed base of more than 300 million CD-ROM drives. Moreover, by enhancing the usability of CD-RW for data storage, consumers benefit from a reduced overall system cost (no floppy or CD-ROM drive required; backwards compatibility with CD-ROM), and gain a system that offers forward compatibility for video and audio storage. For example, the ability for consumers to create super video CD (SVCD) discs and CD-ROM discs with over 200 compressed audio (MP3) tracks, bridge the gap until next-generation, backwards-compatible DVD rewritable systems become commonplace and standardized.

With defect management built into the drive, and native OS support for hardware and dragging and dropping data onto CD-RW, Mt. Rainier will make CD-RW more user-friendly and affordable. Discs written this way will be automatically readable by other CD-RW drives or CD-ROM drives, without requiring a proprietary read driver, ensuring compatibility between all PCs..." NULL