Apple sings the praises of DVD-RW

Apple Computer on Monday said it had shipped nearly half a million computers with DVD recording drives capable of making movies that consumers can play in home DVD players.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based company also said it had shipped more than 2 million DVD recording discs.

Manufacturers shipped more than 600,000 DVD recording drives last year, according to Gartner. Manufacturing sources put the number shipped by Pioneer Electronics, the manufacturer making Apple's drive, below 400,000.

"The majority of those Pioneer drives would have come from Apple," said Gartner analyst Mary Craig. "It appears that Apple has been very successful finally getting a recordable DVD that has a lot of appeal with consumers. They've had the greatest success with any of the formats."

But analysts expect Apple's early lead to vanish as PC manufacturers jump onto DVD recording. No. 1 PC maker Dell Computer and Hewlett-Packard, the leader in consumer computers, started shipping DVD recording systems late last year. Dell and HP also adopted a different format, DVD+R/RW. Apple, Compaq Computer, Sony and Packard Bell NEC in Europe use DVD-R/RW drives from Pioneer.

News source: ZDNet