CD-RW sales slowing; patent-holder Ricoh cites reasons. (Ricoh Electronics)

Tape-Disc Business, March, 1998

CD-RW media sales are expected to be about half that of projections for 1997, according to Ricoh Electronics, primary patent holder and licenser for the format. Ricoh estimated that approximately one million CD-RW discs were sold worldwide last year, half the initial projections for the format anti compared with an estimated 121 million CD-R one-time-writable discs, 60 million of which were sold in the United States.

In an exclusive interview with TDB, Dennis Godlewski, deputy division manager for Ricoh's media sales division, attributed the numbers to a drastic revision in the "attach rate" - the number of discs estimated by manufacturers and industry analysts to accompany each CD-RW drive sold - from an initial estimate of over a dozen down to as low as 1.7...