The Evolution of Taiwan’s CD-R Industry:

• Main Authors: Stella Peng, 彭淑敏
• Other Authors: Hsiao-Cheng Yu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2003
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/97468095952795318559

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 科技管理學程碩士班 === 91 === Abstract Taiwan’s compact disc industry started in 1988. In 1998, with the anticipation of large global market demand of CD-R discs, Taiwanese manufacturers such as the Ritek and the CMC invested heavily to expand their capacity. On the other hand, their Japanese fellows had reservations about the demand, so they were conservative with respect to capital investments. Taiwanese manufacturers thus became the world’s leading suppliers of CD-R disc with revenue of more than NTD 30 billion in 1999. Meanwhile, the Ritek became the largest supplier in the global optical media industry. The manufacturing capacity expansion and revenue growth of Taiwan’s optical disc industry have been quite impressive in the past 15 years. However, Taiwanese manufacturers faced their first loss in 2002. This paper aims to analyze how Taiwanese CD-R manufacturers can be so successful before 2001 and why they began to make a loss. The study is base on the case of Ritek corporation, the biggest global manufacturer. This paper start with confer and sort related documents about the evolution of Taiwan’s CD-R industry. Then, it narrows study scope to Taiwanese CD-R disc industry. Finally, this paper employs the “case study“ method that is used often in qualitative analysis and the in-depth interview. This paper take the Ritek as the target company and drew four parts of Ritek’s development as follows:（1）A brief introduction of Ritek；（2）Expenses and achievements of R&D；（3）Issue of royalty；（4）Financial affairs such as to raise capital and invest in other sunrise industry. The research result can be summarized by the key factors of industry success and recommended future strategies. First among the 3 key success factors of Taiwanese CD-R industry is that Taiwanese financial industry was receptive to invest in optical media industry, which enable the Taiwanese manufacturers to reach the lowest production cost due to economy-of-scale effect from its larger production capacity. Second, Taiwanese manufacturers invested heavily in R&D of manufacturing process improvement, which reduced production cycle time and reached high yield rate. Lastly, the synergy between the CD-R driver industry and the disc industry also helps since Taiwan is also among the primary CD-ROM driver manufacturing countries. The future strategies can be obtained by the following analysis. Since Taiwanese manufacturers invested in R&D later than its foreign peers, Taiwanese manufacturers lost master controlling power of raw materials and equipments. As a result, Taiwanese manufacturers need to pay more for patent rights. Additionally, Taiwanese manufacturers use price competition as the main strategy, which reduce profit margin rapidly. Research results suggest that Taiwanese manufacturers must hand together, invest in new technology, and think thoroughly of patent analysis. Keyword：Success Factor, CD-R disc, Ritek