Sony & NEC form joint venture for optical drives
Sony and NEC set up a joint venture joining their optical disc drive operations, to start operating in April of next year producing DVD and CD drives. This is a strange move, for a couple of reasons: first, the industry will begin moving toward next-generation disc drives around that time, and second, Sony and NEC have taken opposite sides of the next-gen format wars, not just on the sidelines, but as lead developers of the formats: Sony having created the Blu-ray technology while NEC was co-developer of HD DVD. Mainichi has the story.
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