Quanta Storage, the largest slim-type optical storage drive maker in Taiwan, expects to launch half-height, desktop-use DVD+RW drives in June and sample slim-type, notebook-use DVD+RW drives in August. Samples of DVD-Dual drives used in desktops and notebooks are set to be delivered in the second half of this year, the company said. Quanta Storage’s recordable DVD drives will adopt optical pick-up heads (PUHs) and controller ICs provided by Philips Semiconductors, but will be running on the Taiwanese company’s self-developed firmware, the company said.

In addition, the optical drive maker said it had started sampling half-height combo drives supporting 48x write and read speeds with CD-RW discs and 16x reading for DVD-ROM discs earlier this month.

The price of the half-height drives is expected to be lower than the current, priced at around US$300.