Univers Mac Interactif 45/Univers Mac Interactif - Issue 45.iso/Bureau Direct/Journaux/PN3074.TXT

Text File | 1995-03-14 | 7KB | 133 lines

THE ERASABLE OPTICAL DRIVE FAILS TO MAKE ITS MARK

(February 17th 1995) All is not well in the field of erasable
magneto-optical disks. Latest, although preliminary, figures for 1994
from researcher International Data Corp show that worldwide the 5.25"
market is stagnating: 148,000 units were sold, worth $202m, compared
with last year's 141,000 units, worth $179m; the disproportionate
rise in revenue was due to the introduction of 650Mb capacity disks
that were more expensive.

The 3.5" market is more bouyant, up to $296m and 540,000 units from
258,000 units and $296m in 1993. But later this year Sony Corp will
launch a 3.5" drive that will be incompatible with all existing ones
and observers predict this will confuse an already bewildered market.
And while all this is happening there is the possibility that
advances in traditional storage media and the introduction of
erasable phase change, a purely optical technology, may herald
magneto-optical's permanent banishment to niche markets.

But how did this all happen? In the late 1980s, magneto-optical
technology was going to overthrow tape and magnetic disks as the main
storage medium. However, manufacturers' inability to offer
significant performance improvements, failure to compete with
traditional storage media on cost per Megabyte, and the plethora of
standards has meant that the market did not blossom as expected.

Industry watcher St Peter, Minnesota-based Technology Forums blames
magneto-optical's failure to match magnetic media's increases in
areal density. The company has calculated that between 1988 and 1993,
magnetic disk areal density grew by 56%, magneto-optical by only
6.5%. IDC is similarly critical of the way manufacturers handled the
market: it says that in a highly cost-sensitive market, manufacturers
have been unable to show a cost per Megabyte reason for users to buy
magneto-optical drives.

IDC's Stan Corker says manufacturers have approached the market,
especially the 3.5" personal computer-based market, the wrong way
round. "Rather than solving the cost, they've been trying to up the
capacity and sell it at the same price and that's no good for the
personal computer market." And his colleague in Vienna, Bob Payton,
said if magneto-optical technology was to avoid being doomed to niche
markets it would have to double its capacity every year for the next
two to three years. But he said there wasn't the technology to do
that.

Players in the field would disagree: Maxoptix Corp, with some of the
fastest, highest-capacity disks and drives around, says things can
only get better. By the end of the year 2.6Gb capacity will have been
reached; improvements will be made to rotational speed and the read
channel to increase throughput. Within two years, capacities will
reach 8Gb and magneto-optical drives will have direct overwrite.
Fujitsu Ltd reckons it will have a direct overwrite product by the
year-end. And platter costs will have fallen so much that cost per
Megabyte will be less than for magnetic disks.

Even if the assembled ranks of magneto-optical disk makers are just
putting a brave face on things, for them it makes
commercial sense to take magneto-optical technology to its limits.
They have invested heavily in research and fabs; fabs that made the
first generation of products can make the predicted 10Mb products, so
giving them a return on their investment. Fujitsu, for example, is
sticking with 3.5" magneto-optical and intends to push it heavily. It
will provide tools, software and applications to give people a whole
storage package.

IBM Corp, although planning a phase change product, is working on
third-generation magneto-optical technology. But many in the field
are concerned about Sony's plans to bring yet another type of
magneto-optical drive on the market. Dr Ed Engler, head of IBM's
Storage Systems Division in San Jose said Sony's plans would fragment
the market.

Chris Steele, technical marketing specialist for Fujitsu in the UK,
was harsher: "Sony is trying to screw it up because they never had a
230Mb product so they are out of the market and losing out." But Sony
is quite unrepentent. It accepts all of IDC and Technology Forum's
criticisms about the market but says that its 3.5" disk drive will be
more efficient than any other and offer backward compatibility with
the potential to advance.

Whether it fragments the market or not, Sony is sticking with
magneto-optical technology and is scathing of phase change products.
So is Fujitsu, not surprisingly with its plans for magneto-optical
technology: Chris Steele said phase change products were too low
performance to compete with  magneto-optical. "In theory phase change
should be faster but there's no product that proves it," he said.
Also he is concerned, as have been others in the past, about phase
change media's cyclability, which is limited to 1m writes where
magneto-optical platters are claimed to have unlimited rewritability
and the disks are claimed to last a century.

IDC does not predict that phase change this year, at least, will make
any major in roads largely because one of the biggest 3.5" optical
disk markets is desktop publishing where big investments in
magneto-optical technology have been made. These companies, IDC
reckons, are not likely to change to any new format in the near
future. But phase change could sweep through the personal computer
market, damaging the current base. This is because it offers a cheap
and fast storage system and its expansion will be aided by the
proliferation of CD-ROM, the two technologies being easily
integrated.

Phase change offers up to 33% faster data transfer than
magneto-optical technology. Because it is purely optical the head is
simpler to make and so should be cheaper, although the laser has to
be quite powerful and that could push up the costs. The first
erasable phase change product to hit the UK market comes from Plasmon
Data UK Ltd ( and is a multifunction disk drive that can take a 5"
erasable phase change cartridge, read CD-ROMs and play musical CDs,
all for #750. At that price it beats magneto-optical and hard disk
storage and the product, the PD2000e licensed from Matsushita
Electrical Industrial Co's Corp, is compatible with most operating
systems.

It has been described as one of the most important storage products
to be launched for years. But the problems of compatability and
standards that have plagued magneto-optical storage, look set to
strike phase change. By the end of this year Toshiba Corp will launch
a double-sided 1.3Gb, 3.5" disk drive that will have a transfer rate
of 16.4Mbps, compared with Plasmon's 870Kbps. In 1997 both Philips
Electronics NV and IBM, who have been working on phase change
technology since the 1980s, will have products. Toshiba says it has
32 Japanese companies behind its work but not Matsushita. Matsushita
has licensed its drive technology to NEC Corp and the medium to Toray
Co Ltd in Japan and Plasmon Data in the UK. It recognises that for
its technology to be a success there must be multiple vendors, and it
plans to grant more licences by the end of the year. But like
magneto-optical storage before it, phase change looks as if, to start
with at least, it will come in numerous formats to confuse the
market. -- Maya Anaokar

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