Taiwan-based optical drive makers are expected to continue to face pressure in the first quarter of 2011 despite market watchers giving an optimistic forecast that optical drive and hard drive shipments in the first quarter of 2011 are seeing the gap with the fourth-quarter 2010 volume narrowing, as optical drive prices are expected to remain at a low level and Korea-based as well as Taiwan-based makers will still put their focus on competing for market share in the quarter.

Taiwan-based Lite-On IT is conservative toward its performance in 2011 mainly because of fluctuation of Taiwan exchange rate as well as notebook demand, but as the company has been expanding its slim optical drive models, the market watchers believe the company should see a sequential drop less than 10% in the first quarter of 2011, less than an average of 20% in previous years.

The sources also cited research firm TSR's figure and pointed out that the global optical drive shipments will reach 340 million units in 2011, up 6-7% on year and will continue to grow until 2015.

In additional news, Lite-On announced its revenues of NT$4.79 billion (US$163.73 million) for December 2010, down 7.35% on year; however, the company's revenues worldwide in 2010 reached NT$58.72 billion, a growth of 16.6% on year and a new historical record. Meanwhile, Lite-On's fellow optical drive maker Quanta Optical also announced its revenues of NT$1.01 billion, down 53.1%.